Debate shows Obama the organizer and legislator versus Edwards the attorney and litigator

I'm a fan of John Edwards. I like this platform and the populist language of his campaign. I'm voting for Barack Obama. And John Edwards' latest email blast helped explain why Obama's approach is superior than Edwards'.

Barack Obama is all about us. He wants to bet on the American people engaging in self-government to push power into the pragmatic, progressive policies that will make life better for all of us (cutting out corporate middlemen like health insurance companies, eliminating the huge tax breaks for the biggest corporations and using the money to fund investment in all of us, etc.). He talks about 'we' and 'us.'

John Edwards is all about 'me'. "I" will fight for you. This fight is personal to "me." Let "me" be your fighter in the White House so "I" can take on the special interests and the entrenched money interests.

John Edwards is right to point out that there are entrenched money interests that profit handsomely by impoverishing all of us (no money left for financial aid, because the oil companies don't pay any taxes on their billions of profit as an example).

But Barack Obama is more right (if you will) to point out that the way to beat back those money interests is with an engaged electorate, not with a fighter as the President. That's why, as he said in Iowa "I know you didn't do this [vote for Obama] for me" because one President, no matter how aggressive or intelligent, can beat back the parasitic interests. It's only when the nation demands a smarter, saner policy that we can implement the vision.

I think Senator Obama's insight (and John Edwards' lack of insight on this point) is based largely on their backgrounds.

Obama was a community organizer. That means his job was to bring people together around a common vision and wield power together. It was not his job to represent the community in battle and bring back the prize to them. Instead it was to mobilize, inspire and engage previously apathetic people to demand more from their government. And he did it well.

From that position, he became a legislator (first in the Illinois Senate, then in the U.S. Senate). His work in the Illinois Senate is more instructive, because he passed so many bills in Springfield than in Washington. In Springfield, legislative success comes from building consensus. It takes 30 people to vote yes in the Senate to pass a bill, not 1. Any successful legislator learns to engage and inspire others to work collectively in order to accomplish advances in the progressive agenda. Senator Obama learned that lesson well, initiating several progressive bills into law (including ethics reform, tax cuts for low-income workers, an expansion of government-financed health insurance for children and criminal justice reform to videotape all police interrogations). He was successful because he engaged with others to build consensus, not because he fought.

Trial lawyers like John Edwards are also agents of justice. They uniquely hold powerful institutions accountable. But they go it alone. They fight long, difficult and lonely battles against overwhelming odds. When they work, they work on behalf of, not with, the people. They don't need people to join with them in their fight. All they need is permission to fight on their behalf.

I can see that mindset in John Edwards campaign now: I will fight for you in a way that Barack Obama doesn't understand, because I have successfully fought the bad guys and I know they never negotiate.

Barack Obama's tactic is both more appealing (I want to be a part of something, not just a client of John Edwards) and also more powerful (organized money always loses against organized people).

Great moment in Democratic presidential debate between Clinton, Gibson, Edwards and Obama

The subject came to tax policy during the Democratic presidential debate on ABC in New Hampshire. Charlie Gibson took a very anti-tax position and suggested that as we slip into a recession, we should not "take money out of the economy" by raising taxes on high incomes. (Of course, the government spends all the money it takes, and money spent in our country goes back "into the economy" so that's a good thing).

Senator Clinton immediately jumped to say that higher taxes at the Bill Clinton level would be only "on the wealthy" and not on middle-class Americans.

Charlie Gibson sort of tut-tutted and then showed the value of candor and numbers in tax debates.

He said that two professors working at the college are in the $200,000 bracket, as if to say all this talk about taxing the wealthy isn't really fair because regular people would pay more if we repealed the Bush tax cuts.

And everyone in the audience laughed at him.

$100,000 salaries! Come on!

Senator Clinton said "maybe at NYU!"

And everyone laughed at Charlie Gibson for suggesting the regular people make $200,000 a year.

It was the clearest moment of candor in any tax debate I'd ever seen.

We win when we say that people who make more than $200,000 a year should pay the same tax rate they did under Bill Clinton.

John Edwards fumbled a bit, I thought, as he had a chance to lay out the distinction between the two Americas where "the wealthiest Americans get wealthier and wealthier" and the middle-class are struggling, because he didn't use numbers. He said the vague and muddying phrase "the wealthiest Americans."

Barack Obama did the same by using the phrase "the wealthiest Americans" would pay more so that tax relief can go to the middle class.

Hillary Clinton almost did better, when said she would "set her cap at $250,000" for tax increases, but it wasn't clear.

Our problem is that people think they make more money than they do, because everyone aspires to be wealthy. We need to confront our audience with the actual tax brackets at every opportunity -- particularly when we are trying to raise tax rates on high income -- to show that they are unaffected.

Tonight nailed it. We connect with voters when we talk about actual salaries and thus actual tax brackets. "The wealthiest Americans" or "the top 1%" are phrases that are too vague to connect. Numbers do. Euphemisms do not.