From Fight for the Presidency
Not that long ago, John Edwards felt like yesterday's news. The other guy on a ticket that blew a winnable election. Someone more likely to become a Trivial Pursuit question than a future President.
No longer. Edwards is very much in the public's mind again, though for a reason that is wrenchingly sad. In March, he and his wife, Elizabeth, revealed that her cancer has returned and metastasized -- a cruel turn of events for a family that had already faced the grief of losing their teenage son, Wade, to a traffic accident in 1996.
Both insist that John's quest for the Presidency will go on, however, and with his closest advisor and best campaigner, Elizabeth, by his side. Her courage in the face of incurable cancer adds a poignant personal story to the coming election year, but Edwards has said he doesn't want Elizabeth's illness to define the campaign. "There's not a single person in America that should vote for me because you feel some sympathy or compassion for us," Edwards said on the CBS program 60 Minutes.
Since the news came out about his wife, Edwards has climbed in polls of likely Democratic voters. But even before then, he was emerging as a genuine threat to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The former North Carolina Senator has spent the three years since his Vice Presidential run working tirelessly, often under the radar, to put the pieces in place for a strong White House bid.
He's not the candidate you remember from 2004. Back then, his campaign was built largely around his own story: the son of a millworker who grew up in rural North Carolina, a trial attorney who got huge judgments against corporations on behalf of the injured little guy, a candidate who spoke of "two Americas," rich and poor, from the vantage point of someone who's known both worlds.
According to Elizabeth, that campaign left many people with an incomplete picture of her husband. "He has that easy smile and Southern accent, so people sometimes think he's a soft, cuddly fellow," she says. "It's harder to see the fight in him -- but he's a fighter with unbelievable discipline. He has a steel rod inside him."
There's no mistaking the fight in him now. Edwards is on the stump pushing for what he calls "transformational change" as opposed to "baby steps." Iraq is "a mess," he says, and he forcefully declares he was wrong to vote in favor of authorizing the President to go to war. "It's not enough for Democrats to talk about [the war]," he told reporters in New Hampshire last winter. "We need to stop it. We need to show some courage."
On the Issues
Edwards displays similar indignation on other big issues. On health care: "Can we finally say we stand, now and forever, for every single man, woman and child in America having health care?" On the wealth gap: "It's not okay for a few people to get rich and everybody else to continue to struggle." On energy: "Our generation must be the one that says yes to renewable fuels, and ends forever our dependence on foreign oil. It is time to ask the American people to be patriotic about something other than war." On global warming: "We can take responsibility for protecting this earth. But if we don't seize the moment, it will be too late."
Are you detecting a theme? "Edwards is running a very different campaign this time," says Democratic strategist Anita Dunn. "He's appealing to the moral conscience of the Democratic Party." In fact, if there's a phrase he's using just about as often as "transformational change," it's "moral authority." That's the currency our government has lost, Edwards contends, both here and abroad. To drive home the point, he announced his candidacy from New Orleans, with a poor and devastated neighborhood as the backdrop.
Ask him about the first 100 days of an Edwards Presidency, and he talks about traveling the world to repair America's image, and "getting America engaged in issues that are important to the world, so that they could see us as a moral leader -- issues like the genocide in Darfur and the spread of HIV/AIDS."
The John Edwards of today -- feistier, almost angry -- took shape during a period in which, he says, he "learned more than during my time in the United States Senate." Shortly after his 2004 defeat, Edwards accepted a position as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. He's quick to say that he didn't just sit at a desk analyzing problems, but traveled extensively, "getting things done." In a speech at Dartmouth College, he listed things he helped accomplish: "We got the minimum wage raised in six states, made college available to kids willing to work while in school, organized thousands of workers into unions, did humanitarian work in Africa with the International Rescue Committee."
His campaign manager, former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, says Edwards has spent time "thinking deeply about huge issues." That's a standard line to be sure, but to Edwards's credit, he was among the first Democrats to provide detailed policy prescriptions (see "Edwards on the Issues").
Candor can be risky, though. Take his plan to provide universal health care. Edwards unhesitatingly says it will cost between $90 billion and $120 billion a year. When asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press if he'd be willing to raise taxes in order to pay for this, he replied, "Yes. We'll have to raise taxes." Hmmm. He'll have to hope times have changed since that open-your-wallet honesty helped doom Walter Mondale in 1984.
He'll also discover if the playbook has changed since Bill Clinton showed Democrats how to win elections as a centrist. After all, Edwards is running to the left of his rivals. "I don't understand why he was being defined as a centrist last election," says Bonior. "On race relations, organizing workers, poverty -- he was the most progressive. The centrist label was not accurate."
Can Edwards Rally Liberal Activists?
In a campaign year where Democrats can make history by nominating the first woman or African American for President, Edwards's best shot is in becoming the darling of liberal activists. Elizabeth Edwards, herself an accomplished lawyer, is doing her part by appealing to female voters who might be tempted to go with Hillary Clinton: "This is too important an election to just make a statement, to vote for a woman as a symbol." Her husband, she says, "values a woman's worth. It says a lot that John is married to me. No one thinks of me as his trophy wife."
The open question is whether Edwards can rally the activists without alienating the moderate voters he'd need later. That's a key hurdle for every Democrat, according to Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council. "We have to compete for the vital center," he says, "so what we say needs to make sense to the broad public, not just to the narrow ranks of party regulars."
Edwards will have no such worries if he doesn't first capture the nomination. So what's the scenario that could hand him the prize? Here's the consensus of political analysts:
- He has to have a good showing in the four kickoff contests in late January -- the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Don't be surprised if it happens. Edwards is polling well in all these states and has a good chance of finishing first in Iowa and first or second in South Carolina (a primary he won four years ago). Win two of the four and he'd go into the all-important February primaries with a real head of steam.
- He has to lock up key labor endorsements. Edwards has aggressively courted the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, and he has a great shot at corralling these very influential unions.
- He must exploit his communication skills, honed over many years as a trial lawyer appealing to juries. Bill Clinton once said that Edwards could "talk an owl out of a tree." He's also more adept at handling tough, unexpected questions than Hillary Clinton, says Bill Kristol, a Republican consultant and editor of The Weekly Standard. "Political talent, actual skills as a candidate, matters a lot."
In the end, it could come down to the pure serendipity of a long and grueling campaign. The biggest wild card for Edwards is the unknowable progression of his wife's cancer. Worries about whether he can stay in the race might deter some deep-pocketed donors from giving to his campaign.
If Elizabeth's health holds, Edwards's candidacy will stay on track, but he could need one more bit of good fortune. Some favorites inevitably implode (remember Howard Dean?), and even supporters of Clinton and Obama worry about their electability. Should either of those campaigns falter, who will their supporters turn to? "Edwards needs to be everybody's second choice," says Anita Dunn.
So John Edwards forges ahead, convinced that his call for moral leadership encapsulates what the American people want. "We look forward to having a President who is honest and decent, who people respond to in a really positive way," he says.
I'll bet you can guess who he has in mind.