"Staking His Campaign on Iowa, Edwards Makes a Populist Pitch to the Left "

NY Times:

Four years ago — facing what seemed to be a certain defeat in the Iowa Democratic caucuses — John Edwards recast his presidential campaign with weeks to go before the vote, unveiling an emotionally powerful speech about poverty that he delivered relentlessly across the state. Mr. Edwards came within a few thousand votes of victory. To this day, he tells associates he would have won with another week.

This year, Mr. Edwards has picked up where he left off in 2004. He visited 14 places in Iowa in the course of three days this weekend, an itinerary reflecting just how much he has settled on this state as the place where his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination will rise or fall.

Mr. Edwards’s latest trip here offered evidence of just how much he studied the lessons of his Iowa defeat last time, though he would prefer to view it as a near victory. It also suggests the extent to which the rhythms of Iowa Democratic politics have shaped Mr. Edwards’s decidedly different candidacy this time around.

This time, he is a candidate of the left in a state marked by a strong antiwar and liberal streak, filling a vacancy created as Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have campaigned from the center. Mr. Edwards has shown a new eagerness to draw contrasts with his opponents on issues like the war in Iraq and health care, in no small part motivated by his struggle not to get lost in a field of big names. And he has gone from the boyish, easygoing one-time senator from North Carolina to a candidate displaying an urgently engaging manner as likely to seize as to charm an audience, an approach that appears to be particularly effective in the close-quarter meetings that fill his days here.

Beyond that, Mr. Edwards is seeking to quell one line of criticism of him from 2004: that he was inexperienced and intellectually light. At every opportunity, he fairly leaps to offer a detailed response to a question, intended as much to provide a contrast to other candidates as to address any concerns about his own depth.

“Here’s what I think,” Mr. Edwards proclaimed repeatedly as he answered a welter of questions throughout the day, an introductory phrase that signaled a lengthy discussion on his opposition to the war in Iraq, his call for national health care or his view of terrorism.

In an interview, Mr. Edwards said any changes observed by those who watched him last time were the product of maturity and experience, rather than any political retooling. He noted that he had spent the last two years filling potential gaps in his resume, founding a poverty center in North Carolina and traveling abroad.

“More seasoned,” Mr. Edwards said by way of self-assessment, leaning forward and squinting his eyes in the interview, between a late-afternoon jog and an early-evening fund-raiser. “I’ve done a lot of work since the last campaign. And I will say in all honesty that there clearly is some additional depth on these issues. Particularly world issues.”

Though Iowa voters who knew Mr. Edwards in 2004 are finding a different candidate on their doorsteps this time, they are struck more by what they described as his move to the left.

“It seems to be that the last time he was running, he was trying to be the candidate of the D.L.C., trying to be moderate, more centrist,” said Gordon Fischer, who was the state Democratic chairman in 2004 and has not endorsed a candidate this time. He was referring to the moderate Democratic Leadership Council.

“This time around, he’s sort of cut loose from that,” Mr. Fischer continued. “And he is outflanking Senator Obama and Senator Clinton on the left.”

For now, Mr. Edwards’s efforts seem to be paying off. Democrats across the state say he appears to have built strong support here. Mr. Edwards’s hope is that beating Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in Iowa would slingshot him into the front of the field as the race moves across the nation, allowing him to overcome the financial and name-recognition advantage his two main rivals enjoy.

Mr. Edwards has experienced a rough few months, starting with the personal turmoil of the news that his wife, Elizabeth, had received a diagnosis of incurable cancer. It continued with critical disclosures that Democrats here said threatened to undercut his populist appeal — from his employment by a hedge fund to the $400 haircut he received that was the subject of mirthful coverage by Iowa newspapers for a month.

Mr. Edwards, his party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004, has found his candidacy overshadowed by those of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, though he insists that causes him no distress. “I think it’s completely understandable,” he said. “You’ve got a woman running who is a very serious candidate. You have an African-American candidate running who is new and dynamic.”

He is girding for a fund-raising report later this month that many Democrats predict will show him trailing Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, a result that would very well be deflating.

A number of Democrats argued that Mr. Edwards’s shifts could provide ammunition for Democrats trying to stoke an image of Mr. Edwards, a trial lawyer by trade, as opportunistic and politically calculating.

“The problem with him is that he talks very much like a car salesman — you see what I mean?” said Rhonda Fisher, a sociology professor at Drake University, standing in the back of a auditorium after Mr. Edwards expressed sympathy to her upon learning that her son was returning for another tour of duty in Iraq.

Ms. Fisher, who said she supported Mr. Edwards last time, said the car-salesman perception of Mr. Edwards was “not fair,” but that it was prevalent enough to give voters like her pause about supporting him again out of concern that he could take the Democrats to defeat in 2008.

Mrs. Edwards accompanied Mr. Edwards for two of the days he was in Iowa, presenting a toughly affectionate foil to her husband before rapt audiences, who laughed when she joked about his $400 haircut.

She sat to the side during the interview in a Des Moines hotel, jumping in at one point when Mr. Edwards was discussing his aggressive response to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton on the issue of the war at a debate in New Hampshire last week.

“Early in that debate, Mrs. Clinton said something about basically we’re all the same about that,” Mrs. Edwards said. “That wasn’t actually accurate. They weren’t all the same. If everything all looks likes it’s packaged like butter, and some of it’s oleo — voters need to know what they are buying.”

Mr. Edwards, in discussing his approach to the race, noted that in 2004, a major criterion for Democratic voters was whether their nominee would be a strong general election candidate. So convincing voters of one’s electability is not enough in this environment, Mr. Edwards said.

Mr. Edwards said that accounted for why he sounded like a different kind of candidate than he did in 2004. He has gone from a co-sponsor of the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq, to one of its biggest critics. “I think Congress has a responsibility to force George Bush to end this war,” he told voters in Tampa, Fla.

Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant who was a senior adviser to Mr. Clinton in 1992 and is now close to Mrs. Clinton, said: “In 2002, he sounded like General Patton. Now he sounds like Mahatma Gandhi.”