Aggressive Edwards trying to build Iowa momentum

Aggressive Edwards trying to build Iowa momentum
By Steve Holland--Reuters
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
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DES MOINES - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is trying to turn an aggressive debate performance against rival Hillary Clinton into momentum in Iowa with populist rhetoric that the government is corrupt.

"What we know today is that we have to take this country back," he says. "We have to take our government back. And it's going to take truth and sacrifice."

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, has always spoken up for the common man, going back to his 2004 race as the Democratic vice presidential nominee when he spoke of "two Americas," one rich, one poor.

But with two months to go until Iowa on January 3 casts the first presidential votes of the November 2008 election cycle, Edwards has taken on a sharp tone.

Talking to groups of voters in cities and towns across Iowa and New Hampshire, Edwards is raging against the Bush administration, the Iraq war and "the march to war with Iran," Washington lobbyists, trade laws, rich corporate executives, the incomplete repair of post-Katrina New Orleans, and more.

"I think there is actually corruption that has crept into the government," he told a crowd in the quaint Smokey Row coffee shop in Oskaloosa the other night.

Edwards aggressively questioned Clinton in a debate in Philadelphia late last month, a performance front-running Clinton, a senator from New York, said was not her best.

Edwards needs to do well in Iowa to show he has a real shot at the Democratic presidential nomination and told Reuters he feels the race in the state is "close to a dead heat" among him, Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. In 2004, he finished a close second behind the eventual Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"I feel good about where we are," he said, noting he now has television ads running in the state.
(...)
Many admire his populist feistiness.

"I like Edwards because I think he stands up for the common man and that's what we need these days. The middle class is getting squeezed," said Mike Scieszinski, 50, who attended the Oskaloosa event.
(...)
As for Edwards, he is hoping for more like J.W. Murphy, an elderly, mustachioed man in flannel shirt who hauled himself to his feet in Oskaloosa and said Clinton is someone "we don't need" in the White House.

"Could you say that a little louder?" Edwards asked.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0744295920071107

If anything, his pressure has helped obama.