In fact, Edwards's populist rhetoric sounds about the same today as it did three years ago. The big change is his performance away from the podium. Seldom has a presidential candidate undergone Edwards's 2007 trifecta -- reports of the $400 haircut, the $50,000 honorarium from University of California at Davis for a speech on poverty and the $500,000 hedge fund salary -- without his campaign imploding.
Such mishaps appear to be of Edwards's own making rather than accidental, as was indicated after the New Hampshire debate. Edwards's wife, Elizabeth, entered the spin room after the Sunday night debate and took issue with passages in Shrum's memoir. She claimed Shrum misquoted her husband as saying of gays during his 1998 campaign, "I'm not comfortable around those people." At that same time, an Edwards aide attacked Shrum's honesty. Answering a book's account of a 9-year-old encounter is not a good approach for a presidential candidate.
A politically accident-prone Edwards also has cooled the ardor for him in the labor movement, where an endorsement from the Change to Win coalition led by Andrew Stern and James P. Hoffa now is far less likely than it was last December. Hoffa is reported to still regard Edwards as the most pro-labor presidential candidate, but he now doubts whether Edwards can be nominated.
So Edwards must rely on true believers who will brave the bitter Iowa cold in the dark of night to attend caucuses. That's the kind of voter impressed by Edwards lashing out at Obama and especially Clinton on the war. Iowa Democrats in 2004 pulled back from catastrophe at the eleventh hour and abandoned Howard Dean when they contemplated the impact. Party leaders hope Iowans will take a similarly hard look at John Edwards.