By Doug Cunningham

Former U.S. Senator John Edwards says Democrats have to quit aiming just for the political center and instead fully embrace workers and their unions. In a speech to a mineworkers gathering in Law Vegas Edwards said Democrats should “show some backbone and guts and actually fight for the people we’ve always fought for”.

Senator Edwards told the mineworkers in Las Vegas that Democrats should support labor law reform to ban the hiring of replacements for striking workers and to make it easier for workers to join unions.

Edwards is on a national crusade against poverty and says it’s “immoral” that the Bush administration has passed tax cuts for the rich and given subsidies to oil companies while cutting health care programs and college loans. He said the 12 miners at Sago would not have died had the Bush administration not cut funding for mine safety.

Edwards says he has not decided whether or not to run for the presidency in 2008.