John Edwards used to be such a nice guy. In 2004, when he was trying
for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was all sunny optimism
and smiles, trying to use his poster-boy looks and his up-from-humble-beginnings personal
narrative to woo voters in early primary states. He even shunned attack
politics, attempting to prove that a positive outlook could be enough
to win the White House.
It wasn’t enough. Edwards did do surprisingly well in the Iowa
caucuses in 2004, finishing second, but he couldn’t get enough traction
from that strong showing and soon afterward flamed out in the New
Hampshire primary. Now, in 2007, Edwards is back in Iowa, again trying
for the Democratic nomination, and this time he’s angry.
In Creston, Iowa, in late July, Edwards delivered a rant about
unspecified media power brokers who “want to shut me up,” and then
released a YouTube video of the rant to a prominent liberal blog. At
two recent Democratic debates, one sponsored by YouTube and CNN in
July, and another at the YearlyKos convention in Chicago earlier this
month, Edwards was noticeably more confrontational than the rest of the
Democratic field, attacking front-runner Hillary Clinton for her Iraq
positions and her willingness to accept donations from D.C. lobbyists and
promising to personally do battle with big insurance companies and big
oil if elected. The sunny optimist is gone. Edwards is now a scrappy
populist.
Why the shift? Elizabeth Edwards may have delivered the most honest
answer during a recent interview, in which she discussed her husband’s
increasing focus on getting his message out over the internet rather
than through more traditional channels. “In some ways, it’s the way we
have to go,” Elizabeth Edwards said, speaking about the Edwards
campaign’s new internet focus to a business magazine. “We can’t make
John black, we can’t make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of
press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars. Now it’s nice to
get on the news, but not the be-all and end-all.”
The internet, many political strategists have decided, is a highly
emotional medium—more like right-wing talk radio than a civil
space for nuanced political discussions that its early boosters claimed
it could become. These strategists see the corner of the internet
populated by Democratic activists, the liberal blogosphere, as proving
this theory. Online liberals have been cool to moderate, relentlessly
even-keeled candidates, but they are extremely responsive to outraged
Democrats who talk about their willingness to fight—witness the
online success of Howard Dean in 2004 and, more recently, the huge
response that tough-guy Virginia Democrat Jim Webb earned from the
liberal blogosphere during his successful senate run in 2006.
Edwards, in deciding that the internet is his best avenue for
getting his messages out this time around, has concluded that fiery is
the best tone for this new medium, and has adapted accordingly.
The danger, of course, is that Edwards’s personality shift will
simply reconfirm what detractors have said all along: that he lacks
conviction. Recent slips haven’t helped in this regard. Edwards, in
keeping with his new confrontational tone, has been bashing
conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch on the campaign trail, saying:
“The time has come for Democrats to stop pretending to be friends with
the very people who demonize the Democratic Party.” But Edwards’s
recent book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives, was published
by Murdoch-controlled HarperCollins. Edwards received a $500,000
advance for the book, which he said he gave to charity, but as the
Politico recently reported, some of Edwards’s $300,000 expense
budget went to his daughter and one of his senior political aides.
In addition, though Edwards has made a big deal of his pledge not to
take any money from D.C. lobbyists, he is taking money from Wall Street
power brokers (arguably as influential as D.C. lobbyists in shaping
government policy), and he recently worked as a consultant for a big
Wall Street hedge fund (not exactly a populist post). During his tenure
there, the fund increased its investments in subprime mortgages, a
much-criticized type of credit that is seen as preying on poor people.
(Edwards, who has received nearly $170,000 in donations from the fund’s
employees, told the Washington Post in May that he wasn’t
aware of the fund’s expansion of its subprime mortgage
investments.)
Are Democratic voters even following Edwards’s shift in tone, and
its ensuing charges of opportunism and hypocrisy? It’s not clear, but a
recent poll in Iowa offered a hint that however it’s being processed by
voters, the new Edwards tone may not be delivering its intended
results. The poll, released in early August, showed Edwards losing his
much-hyped lead in Iowa, dropping by eight points and now statistically
tied for first place with the candidate who has often been the subject
of his new, ratcheted-up rhetoric: Hillary Clinton. 
