John Edwards: "The Anti-Clinton'

TIME:

The economic populism Edwards talked about in 2004 and has now fully embraced was a winning formula in 2006 for many Democratic congressional candidates--even after Republicans depicted them as big spenders. But presidential candidates are judged by different criteria. Moving to the left doesn't answer one of the main critiques of Edwards in the last campaign: his lack of foreign policy experience. And taking up liberalism may be particularly dangerous for Edwards now that Democrats control Congress, since a G.O.P. opponent could argue that voters would have no check on spending if Edwards were elected.

But Edwards has to win his party's nomination first. If Hillary Clinton runs, she could immediately become the front runner, picking up much of the money and endorsements from the party establishment. The remaining energy, activism and cash that any rival would need to challenge her are on the left, not the center, as Edwards discovered in 2004, when Dean badly outraised him. That's why Edwards has spent the past two years actively courting the liberal netroots, even hiring Dean's old blogger, and wooing top union bosses. Edwards' attacks on Wal-Mart, which has discouraged its workers from forming unions, and his calls for universal health care are beloved by labor leaders, who could give Edwards a major lift in the early primaries in Iowa and Nevada, where their organizations are influential in Democratic politics.

The Edwards strategy would be complicated by a presidential run by Senator Barack Obama, which is why Edwards aides have watched Obama's rise with trepidation. Obama too is very well liked by the left. But both Obama and Hillary Clinton act like front runners: cautiously. They often deploy platitudes (witness Obama's speeches about hope) and look for easy targets (note Clinton's sermonizing on violent video games). That leaves room to emerge as the candidate who connects with Democratic voters by saying bold things that appeal to liberals, as when Edwards wrote "I was wrong" in voting for the Iraq war in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in the fall of 2005. Dean employed this aggressive strategy in 2004 but couldn't win the nomination because he was viewed as too feisty and angry to be President. But if you're going to take your party in a new direction, it helps to be like Edwards, a smooth-talking Southern charmer with a light drawl whom Bill Clinton himself described as being able to "talk an owl out of a tree." That's where the ex-President's model may suit Edwards just fine.