Two Americas; five buckets

Published December 4, 2007 5:00am ET



The John Edwards campaign loves to enumerate things.

The candidate is famous for his “two Americas” rhetoric on rich and poor. But wait: It gets even better. At a panel discussion Monday at the Brookings Institution, Edwards’ senior economic adviser, Leo Hindery, explained that underneath the “two Americas” are “five buckets” — poverty, lack of health insurance, poor education, the offshoring of jobs, and the wage gap — that specifically plague the poor.

Jim Bognet, policy development director for Mitt Romney’s campaign, called Edwards’ rhetoric “unnecessarily divisive.”

Or just flat-out confusing.