Political Review – realoutlook.com

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards recently escalated his condemnation of Hillary Clinton for the support she receives from corporate contributers. He has also criticized her for accepting money from lobbyists and, last month, stated he would ban lobbyists from giving money to any federal candidates. Not surprising from someone whose fund raising has fallen off a cliff forcing him to opt for public financing of his campaign. The plea on his website reads

“This deadline could not be more important. After November 30, we’ll submit our second filing for federal matching funds. As a part of that submission, a contribution you make today will go directly to the resources we need to compete and win in the critical early states. This is crunch time – your contribution now counts more than ever. And with federal matching funds, your contribution can count double! So don’t wait – help us double our strength by making a contribution today.”

He has further stated he would expand public campaign financing to include congressional candidates.

What you won’t hear is Edwards, or any Democrat for that matter, criticizing contributions associated with trial lawyers. The cumulative contributions to the Democratic Party and their candidates, whether from individual trial lawyers and their families, PAC’s, firms or associations, now exceeds those from organized labor. The party has become the lawyers party and fresh legislation is their stock in trade whether it be beneficial to constituents or not. Any hope of tort reform will never see the light of day through a Democratic official.

Edwards stellar success as a trial lawyer in North Carolina during the 1980′s was achieved by winning high profile medical malpractice suits along with a product liability case that won a record award for his state. Cases pertaining to the treatment of women in labor and deliveries of infants with cerebral palsy became Edwards specialty. While he frequently contends he represented the little guy against the big insurance companies he only did so when he got millions of dollars for it.

Since these early victories it has been established they were, for the most part, based on junk science that has profoundly affected medical practice and the cost of malpractice insurance. The argument is that in a delivery where an infant is starved for oxygen and develops cerebral palsy could have been prevented had a c-section been performed. In subsequent years natural childbirth has become a rarity as doctors prefer c-section deliveries, not for health reasons but because of the legal risks it poses.

It is conceivable that a doctor’s incompetence could cause cerebral palsy in an infant according to Dr. Murray Goldstein, the medical director of the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation. He states that

“There are some cases where the brain damage did occur at the time of delivery. But it’s really unusual. It’s really quite unusual… The overwhelming majority of children that are born with developmental brain damage, the ob/gyn could not have done anything about it, could not have, not at this stage of what we know.”

The number of private practitioners North Carolina declined dramatically following Edwards success. The damage has been done, the money is in the bank and he’s not looking back. And unlike so many other wealthy presidential contenders who have risked part of their fortunes, Edwards money will stay in the bank.

In his 2004 presidential campaign John Edwards was successful in coaxing the media into branding him as populist complementing his message of “standing up for the little guy.” Yet his fund raising told quite a different story. While he lead early raising more than $7 million, more than half came from those associated with the legal industry with most of that from fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees. Hopefully, Iowans will do a better job of distinguishing between reality and the trial lawyers argument that more government is the answer to our political palsy. [ro_19]

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Election, Health Care, Politics, Tort Reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.