VIRGINIA POSTREL: “John Edwards won’t carry the South, or even North Carolina, for John Kerry, but he may cost the Republicans some votes, as they misunderestimate him–and wildly overestimate the unpopularity of his profession.”
I agree. An influential segment of the Republican Party hates trial lawyers — but not all Republicans, much less swing voters, feel the same way. Republicans who think that just calling someone a trial lawyer will swing voters against them are out of touch.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse agrees.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg agrees, too — but scroll up for other perspectives.
MORE: Bryan Preston says that I’m wrong. So does Will Collier.
Meanwhile Stephen Bainbridge acknowledges that dissing trial lawyers isn’t a big vote-getter per se, but notes that it energizes the Republican base. That, I agree with.
And while this post is only sort of on-topic, it’s kind of funny.
MORE STILL: Here’s Holman Jenkins from the WSJ Political Diary service (pay-only, but they don’t mind me quoting if I provide a link):
GOPers have struck fund-raising gold in John Edwards’ history as a trial lawyer. But have they struck campaigning gold?
Republicans would be smart to tread carefully around Mr. Edwards career as a trial lawyer. He took strong cases with sympathetic plaintiffs. The problem for the nation isn’t that trial lawyers are evil and all lawsuits are bad, but that the lawsuit industry has become so powerful that it’s distorted the legal process and blocked reform. Even Mr. Edwards has implicitly admitted that there’s problem. His bread and butter was medical malpractice, yet he’s tried to inoculate himself from the obvious abuses by proposing an overhaul that would employ a panel of experts to screen out frivolous and unjustified cases before they get to a courtroom.
Tort reform can be a decent (not great) issue against the Democratic ticket if GOPers play it as a matter of special interests standing in the way of goo-goo reform that even Mr. Edwards has endorsed. The case to make is that he and his running mate are beholden to a lawsuit lobby that has gotten too big for its britches.
That seems right. That Edwards is a trial lawyer may give them some issues, and energize part of the base. But it’s not worth much as a slogan, all by itself, which is how I see a lot of people trying to use it.