The Nation
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Much was made of Illinois Senator Barack Obama's superb speech to a huge crowd of Iowa Democrats at the mid-November Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines. Without a doubt, it helped to propel Obama ahead of New York Senator Hillary Clinton in polls conducted in the weeks after the event.
But Obama's speech in November may not turn out to be the definitional statement of the fight for Iowa.
What could turn out to be the most critical comment of the campaign came from John Edwards in the last debate between the Democratic contenders - and the former senator from North Carolina may well claim the caucus-night victory that is the reward for delivering the right message at the right time.
It wasn't a great rhetorical flourish. It wasn't even a new statement. Rather, it was a particularly pointed and effective restatement of the core anti-corporate message of his campaign.
But it came precisely when Iowa Democrats were getting serious about the caucuses. And it gave Edwards the boost he needed to get back in the competition - and, he is, very much in the competition now.
No serious observer of the December 13 debate in Des Moines doubted that the standout performance, and the standout message, was that of Edwards.
Indeed, undecided voters assembled in focus groups that watched the debate for the major television networks rated Edwards off the charts. That's going to help the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president as the Iowa caucuses approach. Despite the intense focus on the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, most polls suggest that Edwards is very much in the running in Iowa. And rightly so.
To a far greater extent than Obama or Clinton, Edwards has struck at the heart of issues that should matter most in the race to replace not just George W. Bush, but the Bush agenda of corporate giveaways, job-crushing free trade deals, war profiteering in Iraq, and subprime mortgage profiteering in Indiana, Idaho, Illinois and, yes, Iowa.
Edwards summed up his increasingly aggressive and powerful anti-corporate themes with a declaration: "What makes America America is at stake: jobs, the middle class, health care, preserving the environment in the world for future generations.
"But all those things are at risk. And why are they at risk? Because of corporate power and corporate greed in Washington, D.C. And we have to take them on. You can't make a deal with them. You can't hope that they're going to go away. You have to actually be willing to fight. And I want every caucus-goer to know I've been fighting these people and winning my entire life. And if we do this together, rise up together, we can actually make absolutely certain, starting here in Iowa, that we make this country better than we left it."
But the former senator's most effective statement at the Des Moines Register debate on Thursday was one that reflected his deep level of engagement with working people in the upper Midwest, an engagement born of long months spent in Iowa and neighboring states - at a time when Clinton and Obama were spending considerably more time fighting over who had better relations with the media moguls on Hollywood's A-list and in the suites of Manhattan's mortgage manipulators.
Edwards got to know workers in Iowa. He stood with them in their struggles.
Turning a broad question about human rights toward the specific issue of trade policy, the former senator said that human rights, human needs and human values "should be central to our trade policy."
"But," he added, "if you look at what's happened with American trade policy, look at what America got: Big corporations made a lot of money, are continuing to make a lot of money in China. But what did America get in return? We got millions of dangerous Chinese toys. We lost millions of jobs.
"And right here in Iowa, the Maytag plant in Newton closed. A guy named Doug Bishop, who I got to know very well, had worked in that plant, and his family had worked in that plant literally for generations. And his job is now gone. The same thing, by the way, happened in the plant that my father worked in when I was growing up. It is so important that we stop allowing these corporate powers and corporate profits to run America's policy, whether it's trade policy, how we engage with China. This is not good for America. It's not good for American jobs. And it's not good for working people in this country."
That's an issue Edwards has taken far, far more seriously than his opponents in what is now a three-way race in Iowa. And that seriousness has benefitted the former senator.
Remembering the workers who have been battered by the failed trade policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations matters. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both supporters of recent trade agreements, have never connected on the same level. Edwards, who once had a shaky record on these issues but has come to be a passionate proponent of fair trade, comes across as the candidate who gets it. That's why he won the debate in Des Moines. That's why every serious survey that has been conducted in recent days shows him within striking distance of the Iowa win that once was assumed to be Clinton's for the taking and that was then supposed to be Obama's.
No one who is watching the rapid evolution of this race is any longer counting Edwards out in Iowa - or in the rest of a yet-to-be-defined race for the Democratic nomination.
Democrats Enter Stretch in Iowa
By Anne E. Kornblut and Dan Balz
The Washington Post
Thursday 27 December 2007
As Clinton emphasizes experience, Obama and Edwards call for change.
Mount Pleasant, Iowa - With just eight days left to break a three-way deadlock in the Democratic contest here, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton began delivering a closing argument Wednesday that centered on the experience she and her husband gained in the Oval Office during his administration, while her two chief rivals both argued that they could best succeed in bringing change to Washington.
The issues of experience and change have defined the Democratic race for nearly a year, and the dichotomy continued to dominate as the three Democratic front-runners hit the campaign trail running after a Christmas break. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who plans to make his endgame pitch in a speech on Thursday, urged voters to ask themselves, "Do you believe in change?" Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) detoured through New Hampshire before a planned return to Iowa, arguing that his is a more radical call for change than Obama's. Clinton and Obama are launching television ads in the state to bolster their arguments as the three remain tightly bunched in surveys.
Clinton, campaigning with her husband and daughter on a tour themed "It's Time to Pick a President," injected a note of menace into her case, arguing that "the job itself is unpredictable" and that only she among the candidates is qualified to do it.
"You never know what may happen in some part of the world that will create a real challenge to us here at home, here in Iowa," Clinton told a packed auditorium Wednesday.
Polls show that experience has been the attribute on which Clinton (N.Y.) has enjoyed the biggest advantage over Edwards and Obama, and she has sought to pound that theme on the stump. But her competitors have argued that she has the wrong kind of experience to bring change to the White House, a subtle means of referencing some of the knottier chapters of the Clinton administration, and sought to turn a potential asset into a liability for her.
Clinton has shifted from theme to theme in the final weeks of a race that has remained consistently up for grabs, but she seemed to settle back on her original experience argument after two months of attempting to show voters a softer side. Yesterday she criticized Obama's character and questioned whether other Democratic contenders are equipped to beat the eventual Republican nominee. Bill Clinton, introducing his wife, promised that "if she is the Democratic nominee, I believe she will win the election, and win by a handsome margin." In addition to the former president, who is scheduled to continue acting as a surrogate for his wife over the next few days, a team of "Hill's Angels" that includes fundraiser Terence R. McAuliffe and women's outreach organizer Ann Lewis is planning to fan out on Clinton's behalf across the state. Iowans, who continue to deal with treacherous conditions and temperatures struggling to stay about freezing, are now also weathering a blizzard of campaign advertisements, political appearances and attention from news outlets worldwide.
Obama will use his speech on Thursday morning in Des Moines to frame his case to Iowa voters, but as he rolled through north-central part of the state Wednesday he offered a preview, pleading with voters to have the courage to vote their hopes and not their fears. "If you believe I can be the next president of the United States, it can happen," he told an overflow crowd in Webster City.
The senator from Illinois directly addressed doubts that voters may have about him and warned that, in the final days in Iowa, his opponents are likely to seek to exploit them even more. "People start running negative ads or negative mail, and they start planting seeds of doubt. They say 'Oh, you know, Obama is young' or 'You know, is he electable enough?' "
Obama exhorted his audiences to put their faith in their own instincts. "The question is, do you believe in change?" he said. "The question is do you believe deep in your gut that we can do better than we're doing? You know we can, and you have to trust that sense that we can do better because every generation is tested in this way and this is our moment to try to break out of the conventional wisdom and get something done."
Clinton officials sought to cast Obama's remarks as "negative attacks," adding to an atmosphere of heightening hostility in the final days before voting begins in a state that has historically rejected negative campaigning in the Democratic field.
David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said that Obama's speech Thursday will not attempt to reinvent the candidate's message but that "we're getting down to the jury deliberation here" and it is essential for all the candidates to sharpen their closing arguments.
"We really believe this is an election about change and that he is the authentic exponent of change," Axelrod said. "He's the candidate who will bring it. That's the premise on which this candidacy was predicated, and now's the time to close the circle on that message and leave it to people to make that decision."
Axelrod said addressing doubts about the candidate is an essential part of spurring voters to support Obama on Jan. 3. "There's always a mixed impulse" on the part of the voters, he said. "There's an impulse to sort of stick with the known rather than taking a chance on change. It's the same force, as he noted, that Bill Clinton confronted in 1992 . . . We have to urge people to fight their way through it and make a reasoned judgment based on what they've seen and heard." Edwards spent the day campaigning in New Hampshire, which one adviser called a sign of the candidate's growing confidence that he is in a strong position in Iowa and determined not to repeat his mistake of four years ago, when he put too little effort into the Granite State and finished poorly after a strong second-place showing in Iowa.
His campaign issued a strategy memo from his deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, arguing that the former senator has gained momentum in Iowa over the past 10 days and that he will close out his campaigning in Iowa emphasizing kitchen-table issues and a more radical call for change than Obama's. "We know the message is resonating with Iowa voters," Prince said in the memo.
Another senior adviser said Edwards's core message will include the assertion that what is needed in Washington is a fighter who will take on special interests, not negotiate with them. The aide said Edwards believes it is essential in the final days to make certain voters understand the differences among the candidates - "to make it very clear what an Edwards presidency will be about and how it would differ from Clinton and Obama."
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