Man on a Mission

John Edwards isn't gonna take it anymore. Enough is enough, he says. Corporate greed has "an iron-fisted grip on your democracy," he tells people. He's here to break that grip. In fact, he's the only candidate with the "guts and backbone" to do it, the only one who's up to the fight, he says. This brand of extreme populism is what Edwards hopes will help him emerge from Iowa with enough momentum to be competitive next week in the New Hampshire primary; that, and a campaign that, heading into the final days before the Iowa caucus, has gone into absolute overdrive. As he enjoys a mini surge in the polls, pulling into what is essentially a three-way tie with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Iowa, Edwards has embarked on a break-neck schedule and ratcheted up his anticorporate rhetoric with a stump speech that includes heavy doses of rural populism and borders on downright anger. Though aides say angry is the last word they would ever use to describe the former North Carolina senator and trial lawyer, (they prefer passionate), Edwards's current tone certainly contrasts his sunny, optimistic "Hope is on the Way" message of 2004 when he was the Democratic vice presidential candidate. 

For the past week, Edwards has averaged four to five events a day while crisscrossing Iowa on his big blue bus, dubbed the Main Street Express. He's embarked on a 36-hour "Marathon for the Middle Class" in which Edwards will travel more than 900 miles and attend 15 separate events, including a midnight "Get Out the Caucus Party" at the home of a former Iowa secretary of Agriculture nominee—having fun yet?—as well as a 5 a.m. pancake breakfast in— Centerville. The madness, or excuse me, "marathon" finally ends Wednesday night with a 9 p.m. rally in Des Moines headlined by John Mellencamp, whose song "Our Country"—better known to football fans and weekend couch potatoes as the Chevy truck tune—has been Edwards's theme song in Iowa.  

As he closes out his yearlong campaign in Iowa, Edwards is painting himself as a capable, energetic fighter who could "step into the ring against corporate America." He talks about health insurance and drug companies who "rigged the Medicare bill" and whose CEOs make hundreds of millions a year while 47 million Americans go without health insurance and big oil companies like Exxon Mobile who lobby against renewable-energy initiatives like corn-based ethanol. "These people are stealing your children's future," Edwards said at each of his four campaign stops on Monday. Whether at a local community college or a tiny pizza parlor, Edwards makes sure to point out his rural, working-class credentials: not only did he and his daddy work at the mill in North Carolina, but so did his grandmother and his grandfather.

On Monday, Edwards was accompanied by former Georgia congressman Ben Jones, better known as Cooter on the popular TV show "The Dukes of Hazzard." Jones, dressed down in a black turtleneck, leather jacket and bright yellow ballcap with COOTER written in bright red, warmed up the crowd at each event for Edwards with some old-fashioned down-home country charm, clearly meant to relate to the mostly rural Iowa caucusgoers. "John Edwards came from the heartland and he's worked for everything he's got. He's a steady, steady candidate, and he's ready for this final kick," Jones told the crowd at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake on Monday morning.

Edwards has also been careful to paint himself as a Washington outsider who, despite being outspent in Iowa and "never taking a dime" from a Washington lobbyist or PAC, has managed to remain competitive with his main rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have spent a combined $15 million in Iowa compared to Edwards's $2.7 million. At one point on Monday, the issue of money got a bit testy, as one caucusgoer at an event in Emmetsburg told Edwards that Obama's wife, Michelle, had told his daughter that, even though Edwards was a good candidate, he didn't have enough money to win. The man had served up a softball and Edwards teed up, and let it rip for a good five minutes. "We're not gonna have an auction in Iowa, We're gonna have an election. We're gonna decide who the best candidate is, not who the person is who can raise the most money. "I just want to say how unbelieveably weak it is to be arguing that you should be the candidate because you have more money," said Edwards. "When you're resorting to arguments about how much money somebody has, you're in a bad place. If they have more money, and the money's what matters, why are they worried about me?" Then his wife, Elizabeth, in what is for her an uncharacteristic moment of spousal attack, grabbed the microphone and said to her husband, "You may not be surprised but I am surprised and disappointed in Michelle."

Whether the voters react to Edwards's final energetic push remains to be seen. Most of the undecided  interviewed after his events said they were impressed with Edwards but remained undecided. Mary Ann Montgomery of Larrabee, population 150, said she likes how electable Edwards appears to be—polling shows Edwards performing better against Rebpulican candidates than Clinton or Obama—but that she finds his populist rhetoric "a bit too strident. Most people in Iowa share those sentiments but you have to be able to build alliances with the business community in order to be an effective president, and I'm not sure he'll be able to do that."