Reading notes

Tim Grieve writes at Salon:

By portraying John Edwards as an ambulance-chasing, playground-closing personal-injury lawyer, the Bush-Cheney team hopes to turn off swing voters who might otherwise be attracted to Edwards’ populist image while simultaneously shoring up Bush’s support from big business.

But there’s a problem for the Republicans: Lawyers like John Edwards, and clients like Valerie Lakey. …

Edwards practiced law in North Carolina for nearly two decades. He spent the first two years of his legal career as a junior associate in a law firm that represented corporate defendants, then moved on to the plaintiff’s work for which he became famous. He represented children who developed cerebral palsy in lawsuits against their mothers’ doctors and hospitals; a woman who underwent a double mastectomy based on a false diagnosis of cancer; he represented a child whose parents were killed when their car was smashed by a big rig; he represented Valerie Lakey [Valerie, a 5-year old at the time, was disemboweled by the suction of a wading pool drain and is now fed through a tube]. …

“The Republicans want to put Edwards out there as a ‘trial lawyer,’ but I don’t think it cuts deeply as an issue because he’s not your stereotypical, caricaturable ambulance chaser,” says Ferrel Guillory, director of the University of North Carolina’s Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life. “The kind of clients that Edwards represented are everyday folks, folks like you and me, people who feel aggrieved by powerful forces out there, whether it’s an HMO or a hospital or something else.”

Steve astutely observes:

This is the dumbest, most out of touch campaign the GOP could possibly wage. Yes, people hate lawyers, they don’t think much of personal injury lawyers, except when they represent crippled little children and their working class parents. Or maybe American movies have been about other things lately. But the way I remember it, laywers who represent working people against greedy corporations are heroes.

The passion for change that Dr. Dean ignited in me last year is building again with the Kerry/Edwards ticket. As this flame continues, I am joyful: I want to do more than vote against incompetence and depravity; I want to vote for hope. Yes.

[via Steve]