Other candidates in John Edwards’s position might find hibernation appealing. Ice snaps underfoot. Cars lie buried in snow at the side of the road, red strips of plastic fluttering from aerials, and Edwards, despite logging more kilometres in this state than any other Democratic candidate, is struggling to persuade Iowans that he is still in the race.
The Iowa caucuses on January 3 could be the end of the line for Edwards: unless he comes first or second he will be out of the race. In a campaign that is invariably portrayed as a two-person contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Edwards is an often-overlooked third.
It is a very close third — the difference between the three is close to the margin of error — but Obama has newness and the support of Oprah Winfrey. Clinton has a powerful political machine.
On this day Edwards has actor Tim Robbins. ‘I’m not Oprah,†Robbins tells the few hundred people who trudged through slush to the meeting. He rails against the unfairness of Edwards’s position. As far back as eight months ago, he said: ‘We were being sold a fiction of this being a two-person race. Why? No one had voted yet. We’re Americans, we can decide who the frontrunner is.â€
Edwards is all about fairness as he rides his blue bus — the Main Street Express — across Iowa. He is also about fighting. He attacks corporate America, the oil companies and drug companies and the multimillion-dollar bonuses for executives. The Republican candidates are ‘George Bush on steroidsâ€.
‘The few, the powerful, the well-financed, they now control the government,†runs his standard campaign speech. ‘They’ve taken over your democracy. And it affects everything that happens in this country.â€
The fighting talk goes down well in rural areas, smaller places like Grinnell, population 9 300, and also in college towns such as Iowa City.
‘I just think he has a connection with the average household and family,†said Janet Smith, who works in the university’s education department.
Smith, like many — if not most — of the people turning out to hear Edwards, is a long-time supporter. She was captivated by his unflagging optimism during the 2004 elections, when as the Democrats’ vice-Âpresidential candidate he was the sunny personality buoying up the serious, privileged John Kerry.
Edwards still radiates optimism, only this time it is about the possibility of fighting corporate America to bring about economic justice.
‘The time has come for us to rise up, not to stand quietly by, not to say this is okay, but to rise up as one together and say: ‘We are taking this country back’,†Edwards tells his campaign meetings. ‘All of us are going to do this together. That is where the power in America is.â€
In 2004 he campaigned as the self-made son of a North Carolina mill worker, whose rise to multimillionaire trial lawyer was living proof of the American dream. He was a determined centrist and a supporter of the Iraq war. There was an underlying sadness. In 1996 Edwards’s teenage son, Wade, was killed in a car accident, a loss that led him to enter politics. He was elected to the Senate two years later. But the most combative Edwards got was his ‘Two Americas†slogan.
This time the upbeat centrist of 2004 is an anti-poverty activist, who has admitted he was wrong to support the war. And there is more sadness. His wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after Kerry and Edwards lost the 2004 election, announced last March a recurrence of the disease. It is incurable.
Edwards has traded expensive suits for jeans, though he still has that improbable head of glossy hair, maintained through $1 250 haircuts that have brought him much ridicule.
He is also much more forceful in demanding economic justice. ‘I think we have an epic fight in front of us. We do. The idea that we are going to sit at a table with drug companies and oil companies and that they are going to voluntarily give their power away… Right,†he said, taking an indirect swipe at Clinton and Obama. ‘It is a complete fantasy. It will never happen. Let me tell you: they will give their power away when we take it from them.â€
Some Iowans like this new fighting, but the confrontational style could scare voters away. In 2004 Edwards was well at the back of the field three weeks before the caucus. But voters turned to him and his upbeat message when the then-frontrunners — Kerry, Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt — turned sharply negative in their campaigns.
That year the state’s main newspaper, the Des Moines Register, endorsed Edwards’s candidacy and he soared to second place in the caucuses. Not this time: the Register has endorsed Clinton. ‘This is a different race, with different candidates,†the paper said. ‘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.â€
Edwards also lost ground when the fancy haircuts and $6-million home, as well as high consultancy fees to hedge funds, raised doubts about his commitment to the anti-poverty cause.
‘I am not ready to fold it in,†said Janet Smith. ‘I do just hope there is a groundswell.†But others could see themselves switching sides. ‘Obama is really rallying the troops and maybe my friend John needs to do more of that,†said Roma Stewart, who lives in Grinnell.
Others argue Edwards has a far greater potential than is reflected in polls or the media. He has spent more time in the state than any other candidate. His supporters are committed and unpaid and have been deployed in virtually all of the state’s 1 781 precincts.
‘This time I am going into the last three weeks with a lot of strength. Last time I came out of nowhere,†Edwards told The Guardian. ‘I know Iowa caucus-goers. They trust me, and I think we are going to get a very strong response.†—