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Edwards Battling In Final Rounds

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times

Published: December 19, 2007

OTTUMWA, Iowa - More than 150 Iowans were rustling in their chairs at a community college the other night, waiting for John Edwards. His bus was parked and running outside the door, but it was nearly 45 minutes before he finally made his characteristically late entrance.

When he did, Edwards strode in as if he were climbing into a boxing ring. For half an hour, he talked about fighting special interests and battling corporations. He urged his audience to rise up against health care companies and insurance executives. Pugilistic until the end, he loudly told a story of how his father ordered him to go out and "kick that guy's butt" after he came home from school with a bloodied nose, suggesting that was a lesson he would carry into the White House as well.

"We have an epic fight in front of us, and anybody who thinks that's not true is living in a fantasy world," Edwards said. "How long are we going to let insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies run this country? Every time this has happened in our country, the American people have risen up and taken action."

Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, almost won the Iowa caucuses in 2004 by introducing, in the final weeks of the contest, a closing argument that drew huge crowds and, polls suggest, rallied supporters to his corner right up until the night of the vote. Now, Edwards, a former trial lawyer, is offering yet another closing argument to his jury of voters here. And there is evidence - from the size of his crowds to the decision by an opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, to challenge him more directly in the past few days - that it may be working.

Campaign Pitch Has Changed

In the process, though, Edwards is raising questions about his political identity that have followed him throughout this campaign. There is, in this final appeal to Iowa Democrats, no more talk about "two Americas," and barely a whisper of the optimism that distinguished him from the field in 2004 and which he exhibited as recently as a few weeks ago. He has dropped the attacks that he was aiming just weeks ago at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Washington politicians, and Iraq is an issue that he mentions almost in passing, albeit with fervor.

Instead, he is issuing a defiant pledge to fight big business, to voters in a state that has been buffeted by national and global economic forces and is still reeling from the closing of a Maytag plant in Newton in October. In his speech here, he used the word "fight" about a dozen times in 25 minutes. In television advertisements, he tells voters he is angry and ready to battle on their behalf.

He is arguing that he is far more electable than Obama or Clinton, an argument that, like his economic populist pitch, has resonated in the past with Iowa Democrats.

Sentiment The Same, Edwards Says

Edwards, a former senator, said his sharp-edged message, which at several stops brought people to their feet as he urged them to rise up, was barely different from what he was telling voters in 2004 or, for that matter, what he was telling them six months ago.

"I think the message is very similar," he said, sitting in a room offstage at the Center for Performing Arts in Des Moines. "It's just not couched in 'two Americas.' It's couched in what we need to do to get things done."

Yet it was different enough to catch the disapproving eye of the editorial board of The Des Moines Register, whose support in 2004 was a critical factor in his showing here, and which endorsed Clinton on Sunday.

"Edwards was our pick for the 2004 nomination," the editors wrote. "But this is a different race, with different candidates. We too seldom saw the positive, optimistic campaign we found appealing in 2004. His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change."

Edwards acknowledged, and rejected, the perception of some voters that is was not genuine, that he is tacking to adjust to changing political winds.

"These people don't interact with me," he said. "They are reading it somewhere. When they interact with me, they don't feel that way. I think most Americans believe what I'm saying."

And he said he does not think his campaign stance would prove counterproductive in Washington or, as one Iowa reporter asked him, off-putting to Iowans. "I only know what I see in the audience: People respond powerfully to it," he said.

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