"Familiar Face, but a New Tone"

NY Times:

John Edwards has no intention of getting lost in the shuffle.

Faced with what he always knew would be a tough race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and now the challenge of convincing his party that he is also a better alternative than Senator Barack Obama, Mr. Edwards is trying to muscle his way past them and the rest of the field, in part by staking out early and provocative positions on the big issues.

On the war in Iraq, Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, not only came out for a complete withdrawal within 12 to 18 months, but he also challenged his Democratic rivals who are still in government to confront President Bush more directly. And on Monday, Mr. Edwards will set out a plan to provide health insurance to the 46.6 million Americans who do not have it, stealing a march on Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats on what is shaping up to be one of the biggest domestic issues of the presidential race.

Appearing on “Meet the Press” on NBC on Sunday, Mr. Edwards said he would raise taxes on people making more than $200,000 a year to help pay for the plan, which he estimated could cost up to $120 billion a year.

Mr. Edwards, his party’s nominee for vice president in 2004, has taken on a sharper tone since that campaign ended in defeat.

He is campaigning as a harder-edged economic populist now, which he says represents more a change in tone than in substance. He says he is both more electable and more authentic than Mrs. Clinton, and more experienced than Mr. Obama.

The rapid emergence of Mr. Obama has scrambled the Democratic field in a way that poses a particular challenge for Mr. Edwards. He now faces intense competition for the role of fresh-faced change agent. His appeal to voters who feel disenfranchised by the economy and aggrieved by the war must now carry over the similar message being developed by Mr. Obama.

But in the battle to be the most credible alternative to Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Mr. Edwards has built some early advantages.

He has avidly pursued labor support, marching on picket lines in Miami, Las Vegas and Chicago, pushing for state minimum wage increases and speaking at union conventions. He is offering proposals on the war, health care and the environment that are more audacious and more specific than those of his rivals.

His efforts have paid substantial dividends. He leads in early polls in Iowa and is near the top in New Hampshire surveys. He is ahead of his principal rivals in organizing in the two new early caucus and primary states of Nevada and South Carolina. He has a solid financing base in trial lawyers and antiwar Internet activists, high name recognition and experience on the campaign trail.

Mr. Edwards acknowledged that he was running as a very different candidate this time. He said he had grown and matured and learned from his mistakes, and has told friends that he really was not ready to run for president in 2004. He has spent the past two years directing a poverty center at the University of North Carolina and traveling the country and world to learn about the problems that will confront the next president. He said he had learned more in the past two years, a period that included the recuperation of his wife, Elizabeth, from a life-threatening encounter with breast cancer, than in his six years in the Senate.

“I, like all of you, have evolved,” Mr. Edwards said last week to a sizeable crowd at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “It is not enough to do small things. Baby steps and incremental change are not enough. We need transformational change.”

Mr. Edwards said such change would involve considerable sacrifice by Americans who can afford it, in the form of higher taxes for the wealthy to pay for health care for those who do not have it now and voluntary reductions in the use of fossil fuels to address global warming. He said the nation had more important priorities than balancing the federal budget.

He has clearly migrated to the left in the past several years. He has repudiated his 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq and has called on Mrs. Clinton to do the same. He said nonbinding resolutions on the war, like those supported by Senators Clinton and Obama, were meaningless.

Some critics and aides to rival candidates say all of this is nothing more than an opportunistic rebranding to attract labor and Internet support to mount a viable primary challenge to Mrs. Clinton and the unexpected threat from Mr. Obama.

Others say that though Mr. Edwards is a credible contender, like anyone running an insurgency against the establishment candidate, he will not be able to fall back on the top-tier institutional and financial support that will rescue Mrs. Clinton if she should stumble in the early states where Mr. Edwards appears strongest.

“He has a distinguishing message, he has deep committed organizational help as a result of the work he’s done both with unions and other groups around the country, and he’s leading in Iowa,” said John D. Podesta, who served as chief of staff in the Clinton White House and is now an adviser to Mrs. Clinton. Despite all that, Mr. Podesta said, Mr. Edwards will have trouble overcoming Mrs. Clinton’s broad and deep support.

Mr. Podesta cited the example of Gary Hart in 1984, who ran as a progressive alternative to the establishment candidate, former Vice President Walter Mondale. “He couldn’t convert his early strength into the nomination,” Mr. Podesta said. “There was enough time and enough influence by the party elites to backstop Mondale when he took some early blows.”

The John Edwards of the 2004 campaign is still recognizable today: the youthful face, the story of the son of the mill worker who made good as a trial lawyer fighting for the wronged against the powerful.

But his campaign voice is different, at times angry and more impatient. He said that in his last campaign he was handicapped first by his inexperience as a national candidate, and then by his subordinate role as Mr. Kerry’s vice presidential nominee. He said that this time he was more seasoned and unshackled, which he believes gives him advantages over his two most prominent rivals, Senators Clinton and Obama.

Americans assume they know Mrs. Clinton, he said, “But what is unknowable is what will happen during the course of the campaign, what it will reveal about the character, the integrity, the decency of the candidates involved.” He said that Mr. Obama had no idea what was about to hit him. “The intense spotlight of a national campaign is an experience that is unique for any American,” Mr. Edwards said. “You may think you know what it’s like, but if you haven’t been through it, you don’t.”

He said he had seen the impact of free trade on workers in the United States and abroad and now doubted whether he would again support permanent normal trade relations with China, which he voted for as a senator. He said he probably would support the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act again, but would demand stronger protections for domestic civil liberties.

He displayed another difference from 2004 at the meeting at Dartmouth last week. A student asked him whether he would support a law allowing for full marriage benefits for gay men and lesbians.

He said he had grown up as a Southern Baptist in a conservative small town and was torn by the concept of same-sex marriage. “I’ll admit I’m personally conflicted about these issues,” he said. “I am not personally for gay marriage, but it troubles me that I’d use my own experience as the basis for a policy decision.” He said that while he opposed same-sex marriage, he supported civil unions for gay couples and all anti-discrimination laws.

Mr. Edwards said later that had he been asked the same question in 2004, “I would have finessed it and given a formulaic answer.” He added, “I just find it easier to be more candid now.”

Mr. Edwards and his aides are counting on the work of the past two years to help overcome his biggest challenges. He has hired a new campaign manager, David E. Bonior, former Democratic representative of Michigan and an unreconstructed pro-labor liberal, and is hoping for organizational help, if not endorsements, from politically active unions. Mr. Edwards makes a point of greeting bartenders, kitchen workers and hotel clerks at all his campaign stops.

Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which has 1.8 million members, said the union would not necessarily endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary, but she spoke warmly of Mr. Edwards.

“He’s been in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston talking to hotel workers,” Ms. Burger said. “He believes deeply in the rights of working people.”

What is unknown is how he, and all the other contenders, will stand up under a full year of scrutiny in a primary process that began earlier and promises to be more intense than ever.

“Now that,” Mr. Edwards said as he and his wife flew to New York to raise money from a passel of Wall Street barons at the Regency Hotel, “is a good question. But we’ve been through it before.”