Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is taking a page from Bill Clinton's playbook and building on it. He feels your pain — and your anger.
The upbeat Mr. Sunshine and Southern moderate of the 2004 presidential race has turned into the populist pursuing support from the party's liberal wing in hopes of overcoming leading rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Edwards has given voice to voters' frustrations over an unending Iraq war, rising health care costs and disenchantment with Washington.
Anger can be a tricky emotion for a politician. In 2004, Howard Dean was known as the angry candidate and it proved to be part of his downfall.
"The electorate gets to be angry, but politicians typically should be more temperate," said Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, who added that "there's a fine line between channeling anger and being angry."
Edwards is different from Dean, who had a tendency to get ticked off at times and pop off unexpectedly. Edwards is channeling his emotion in a more deliberate way.
Still, Edwards' impassioned outbursts also can backfire, especially when his own past words and deeds come back to haunt him.
In Tuesday's AFL-CIO debate, Edwards' voice rose as he pledged his solidarity with union workers, citing the 200 times he walked picket lines in the last two years and being with rank-and-file at "crunch time."
"That's the question you have to ask yourself. Who will stand with you when it really matters?" he asked.
Rival Joe Biden testily suggested Edwards was a Johnny-come-lately, who only embraced labor's cause recently for the political expediency of the presidential race.
"The question is, did you walk when it cost? Did you walk when you were from a state that is not a labor state?" Biden asked.
To make its point, the Biden campaign distributed a list of news stories from 1998, when Edwards ran for the Senate, showing that he supported a North Carolina law that prevented workers from being forced to join a union — an anti-union position.
"I think Senator Edwards, fairly or unfairly, has come across in this campaign to some as being less than authentic," said Andy Arnold, chairman of the Greenville, S.C., Democratic Party.
Last week, Edwards was vociferous in demanding that Clinton and other rivals refuse contributions from News Corp., owner of Fox News, which he labeled as biased against Democrats. A day later, News Corp. pointed out that Edwards has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars for a book published by the corporation's HarperCollins. News Corp. asked whether Edwards would return his book advance; he said he gave the money to charity.
Faced with this reality, Edwards lashed back.
"They can continue to attack," the candidate snapped on CNN's "The Situation Room." "They will not silence me."
Someone on Edwards staff should point out to him that his Democratic rivals probably do not want to see him "silenced." If Edwards wants to continue to feed Clinton or Obama or Biden(!) with easily dismissible rants, they will happily accept.
There is such a thing as "looking Presidential" and you cannot survive and prosper in politics without it. You may be able to win a primary without a Presidential air about you, particularly in a year when your party's prospects seem dim (think Goldwater in 1964 or Dukakis in 1988.) However, the Democratic prospects for 2008 are good and everybody knows it. The hysterical lefty bloggers may desire an ill-tempered lunatic as the perfect embodiment of their existential being, but regular Democrats don't and won't.
It is sort of sad, as Edwards has at least made an effort to have a bit more content in some of his policy proposals compared to his rivals, but his pandering to the worst elements of the Democratic base will get him nowhere fast.
Does Edwards really believe being a more rabid Kucinich is the path to victory?
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