Washington – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama challenged John Edwards’ claim as the anti-poverty candidate Wednesday, reminding voters of his experience working with the inner-city poor as his rival bemoaned the plight of the downtrodden in rural Appalachia.
The two hit strikingly familiar themes in competing speeches on an issue that doesn’t usually get much attention in modern presidential politics, but Democrats have pushed poverty to the forefront.
Obama spoke in the Washington neighborhood of Anacostia while Edwards wrapped up an eight-state poverty tour in Wise, Va., and Prestonburg, Ky. Both invoked a Democratic icon – Robert F. Kennedy, who drew attention to the country’s poor some four decades ago.
Speaking at the Floyd County courthouse – the same site where Kennedy ended his poverty tour in 1968, Edwards said he wants “America to remember what he did decades ago. I want you to join us to end the work Bobby Kennedy started.”
Obama alluded to Kennedy’s tour and repeated a question that Kennedy uttered throughout his address: “How can a country like this allow it?”
The first-term Illinois senator argued that he has had a long-standing interest in helping the poor, dating to his first job after college as a community organizer in Chicago.
“This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign. It’s the cause that led me to a life of public service almost twenty-five years ago,” Obama said.
Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, said his interest in poverty was not born out of politics. He said his background was so humble that his father had to borrow $50 to bring him home from the hospital.
Although Edwards eventually became a successful trial lawyer, he continued to fight for the less fortunate in his legal career and as a North Carolina senator and beyond, he said.
