Although John Edwards had no business running for President in 2008 given the tawdry marital indiscretions that he was hiding from nearly everyone, including from his senior campaign team, he nonetheless clearly established the agenda on jobs (and labor) and trade for all of the Democratic candidates, especially as it later turned out for then Senator Obama.
Following Edwards' second-place finish in Iowa his other top advisor and I (at the time, I was serving as his Senior Economic Policy Advisor) compressed into a single 'manifesto' all of his statements over the prior year on these issues. For the short remainder of his campaign, he spoke continuously about keeping a robust number of manufacturing jobs in America, on the order of 20% of overall employment. He spoke of the need to forge a new partnership between organized labor and government. He pledged to make passing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) a major and immediate priority and to passing a ban on hiring permanent replacement workers for strikers.
Concerning trade and globalization, we espoused investing the resources required for the U.S. to keep its competitive edge in the world, and asserted that our global trade needed to be based on four core principles:
1) First and foremost, America's trade agreements must provide clear and measurable benefits for American workers - and then they must be enforced. This means they must include prohibitions against illegal subsidies, currency manipulation and other trade abuses. It means they must protect U.S. national security-related manufacturing essential to our high-tech weaponry and defense.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-hindery-jr/where-is-the-2008-barack_b_644173.html
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