Looking to '08?

John Edwards has accepted a faculty position at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina, as director of the new Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. This, of course, was his main rhetorical focus during his presidential campaign and I believe it is where the Democrats should compete for the morals vote, both for electoral and moral reasons. And he showed back up for the first time since his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in, of all places, New Hampshire. Hmm.

He resisted looking back at the reasons he and Sen. John F. Kerry lost the election but quibbled with those who have said the Democrats face a values deficit or that Democrats cannot compete in the South and in rural areas. "We didn't run a campaign in the South," he said. "In the future, it's important for us to compete everywhere in the country."

Democrats, he said, do not need to change their positions to become competitive again. "I just think that trying to figure out how to change our position a little bit on this and a little bit on that is dead wrong," he said. "We ought to stand up for what we believe in, we ought to make clear the country knows what we believe in and what it is we want to do, from Day One."

That theme dominated his speech Saturday evening. "All the political experts since the election have been talking about what the Democrats believe in. Some of them have been saying we don't stand for anything," he said, adding, "We believe in hope over despair, we believe in possibilities over problems, we believe in optimism over cynicism. We believe in doing what's right even when others say it can't be done. And we believe in fighting desperately for those who have no voice in America."

Exactly right, though he deflected any questions about his plans for 2008 (oh, and he had that distracting mole on his lip removed on his doctor's advice). I'm not willing to cede one inch of morality ground to the right. In fact, I think it's time to get in their faces about it.

My newly expanded clan visited my mother, a public high school teacher, this weekend and she was talking about a young, male, very conservative teacher with whom she works that asked her how she could possibly be a Democrat. I think the answer she gave was just about perfect: "Because I started out as a Christian, and when Jesus talked about 'the least of these,' he didn't qualify it with 'the least of these who are worthy'."

Don't mess with the Apostromom. She'll nail your ass to the wall rhetorically without ever losing her disarming smile and calm reasonableness. Other famous rejoinders:

Setup: If you voted your wallet, you'd vote Republican.
Response: I don't vote my wallet, I vote my conscience. You should try it.

Setup: But what did Jesus have to say about homosexuality?
Response: Jesus didn't have anything to say about it; Paul had some thoughts. But you know what? I've talked to God about this and he told me it's okay to believe what I believe.

Take notes, folks. That's how it's done. Remember: the righteous were wrong in Jesus' time, too.