Rocking the Boat

This effort from Stuart Rothenberg really makes me hope John Edwards wins. The best part is when he explains that working class voters should fear Edwards because his populist rhetoric will case stock market declines:

Scare the stuffing out of Corporate America and watch the stock market tumble. That’s certain to make retirement funds – including those owned by labor unions and “working families” – happy, right?

Uh huh. Look. If you think Edwards' substantive policies are radically left-wing and bound to crush the national economy then, obviously, people have no good reason to vote for him -- working class or otherwise (for the record, the vast majority of stocks are owned by a small minority of very wealthy people). But Rothenberg doesn't so much as try to make the case. After all, it's a hard case to make. It's an especially hard case to make since Rothenberg wants to negatively contrast Edwards with the more mainstream talk coming from Clinton and Obama. But they all have similar policies. But to Rothernberg, the main thing is that we don't want anyone who'll say mean things to those poor little CEOs. We all feel super-sorry for them, sure.

UPDATE: I actually probably should have said this more seriously -- if Edwards wins in Iowa by running left and pissing people off, that'll be a good thing for the world. By contrast, while there's a lot I like about Barack Obama, if he wins Iowa it won't have been by running hard on the things I like best about him.