Elizabeth Edwards Questions Hillary Clinton’s Strength On Women’s Issues

In a recently published interview with Salon.com, Elizabeth Edwards discusses her recent confrontation with Ann Coulter, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton’s plan to reduce the participants in debates, her support for gay marriage, poverty and a few other ‘08 tidbits.  The interview is certainly worth a read, but by far, the most interesting part is Elizabeth Edwards’ criticism of Hillary Clinton’s credentials and advocacy of women’s issues:

Joan Walsh: Do you ever have twinges about, well, you’re supporting this great guy, your husband, but against the first credible woman candidate and the first credible African-American candidate in the race?

Elizabeth Edwards: No, I don’t. I wind up talking about this a lot. My job as the mother of daughters is to make sure my children see that every opportunity is available to them. What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn’t value a white man because he’s a white man, but also doesn’t value a woman because she’s a woman, or a black because he’s a black. So it bothers me that the pitch is made, as it is, that there’s an obligation of people to give support. When I was a lawyer, I was the first female lawyer many people had ever seen. I had an obligation to my client to do the work right, but I thought constantly about my obligation to the women who came after me. If I didn’t do a good job, they wouldn’t get a chance to sit where I’m sitting. I think one of the things that make me so completely comfortable with this is that keeping that door open to women is actually more a policy of John’s than Hillary’s.

Joan Waslh: How do you see that?

Elizabeth Edwards:On the issues that are important to women, she has not … well, healthcare, that’s enormously important to women, all the polls say, and what she says now is, we’re going to have a national conversation about healthcare. And then she describes some cost-saving things, which John also supports, but she acts like that’s going to make healthcare affordable to everyone. And she knows it won’t. She’s not really talking about poverty, when the face of poverty is a woman’s face, often a single mother. She gave that speech on abortion a few years ago [saying abortion should be "safe, legal and rare"].

Look, I’m sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you’re as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women’s issues. I’m sympathetic — she wants to be commander in chief. But she’s just not as vocal a women’s advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, “Support me because I’m a woman,” and I want to say to her, “Well, then support me because I’m a woman.” The question is not so much how she campaigns — that’s theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she’ll govern? And I’m not convinced she’d be as good an advocate for women. She needs a rationale greater for her campaign than I’ve heard. When she announced her candidacy she said, “I’m in it to win it.” What is that? That’s not a rationale. Same with Senator Obama — I’ve yet to hear a rationale. John is extremely clear about what he can accomplish and why he’s the one to do it.

As we discussed in last week’s podcast, Elizabeth Edwards often serves as as fierce attack dog for John Edwards.  As a non-candidate and a  woman, she’s able to take actions and levy criticism that her husband, the candidate, is not able to offer.  Outside of the Clintons, no other couple in the race operates with such effective synchronicity.  With respect to Elizabeth’s criticism of Hillary Clinton, I’m just not sure I fully accept it.  I recognize the need to appeal to women voters and therefore the importance of the campaign to tout their credentials in the field of women’s advocacy.  However, I’m not really sure that saying that Hillary isn’t strong on women’s issues is a worthwhile strategy; especially when that criticism is juxtaposed with a suggestion that Hillary Clinton isn’t as strong on the choice issue as she should be.  These remarks seem to deny reality to the point of almost becoming intolerable.  I’m sure some of the extreme left elements within the Democratic party will eat them up, however, these people are likely to be supporting someone other than Hillary Clinton in the primary already, so I fail to see who Elizabeth’s target audience was.  If anything, it seems strategically foolish, since it runs the risk of a backlash against the Edwards campaign (people are typically uncomfortable with “those that eat their own”).

Regardless, this is a sign that the Edwards campaign intends to increase pressure on the two frontrunners - Obama and Clinton.  In the coming weeks, you can expect the Edwards to take the moral high ground on the poverty issue, which they’ve earned, connect other issues to poverty (as Elizabeth did above with women’s issues) and use this leverage to issue new criticisms of their opponents and possibly develop new pockets of support.

As an aside, I have to again take issue with Elizabeth Edwards’ remarks about the vitriol in this presidential campaign and her encounter with Coulter:

When I travel, so many older people thank me for what I did. Because the vile kind of way Ann Coulter thinks and talks, that was not ever part of the public discourse until recently.

Indeed, I applauded Elizabeth Edwards for taking issue with Coulter’s nonsensical tirades, however it is worth noting that history does not support Elizabeth’s claim that vile comments, like the one Coulter often makes, are a recent addition to political discourse [read my post on the mudslinging in past presidential campaigns for more information].  Something about revisionist history really gets me fired up, so I just wanted to set the record straight.

From a political perspective, aside from my disagreement over the handling of Hillary Clinton and women’s issues, Elizabeth’s interview with Salon.com was a good idea.  Given some of the negative press that John Edwards’ has received lately after the whole ‘Clinton-Edwards secret debate plot incident’ and the lack of press for his poverty tour, it was certainly the perfect time for Elizabeth to get out there and shake things up - much like she successfully did for the Edwards campaign prior to the close of the second financial quarter.

[Photo Credit: Flickr user Lindsay Beyerstein]

Related at 2008Central.net:

• The First Wives Clubbing? (7/16/07)
• A Historical Perspective On The Continuing Edwards/Coulter Clash (7/5/07)
• Edwards Camp and Coulter Clash Twice More; Coulter Now Backs Hunter (6/26/07)
• Elizabeth Edwards Supports Gay Marriage (6/25/07)