John Edwards turns on his fellow Democrats

As he struggles to move up in the polls, Edwards begins taking not-so-subtle digs at his rivals -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Democratic Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, News, John Edwards, Michael Scherer, Barack Obama, 2008 election

Salon composite/AP Wide World

Aug. 30, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Last week in Hanover, N.H., John Edwards shot off a rhetorical signal flare. "I want to go one step further," he said. Something new was coming. This wasn't going to be just another stump speech about the "Two Americas" -- one for the rich and one for everyone else. He was about to attack his own party, the Democratic Party, which he likes to call "the party of the people."

"The choice for our party could not be any clearer," he continued. "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other."

Of course, he never named the fellow travelers targeted by his broadside. But he left plenty of clues, given Hillary Clinton's time in the White House and Barack Obama's record fundraising. "The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale," he said, "the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House and the Senate."

In one way, the onslaught was not surprising. In the ecosystem of the Democratic primary, Edwards is both the liberal lion and the populist prairie dog. He loves bashing corporations and their big wallets, and he often blames lobbyists for the nation's ills. It's a tried and true posture. He won his first Senate race in 1998 as the self-branded "People's Senator," running numerous ads that tied the incumbent Republican to "PACs and Washington lobbyists." He won a slot on the Democratic ticket in 2004 by promising to blur the dividing line between the haves and the have-nots.

But this summer, as he has struggled to gain traction in the polls in the early primary and caucus states, Edwards has taken a new turn. For the first time in his career, he is running for office by criticizing segments of the Democratic Party, the institution he has long held up as the only hope for restoring economic justice in America. In particular, he has tried to paint Democrats who continue to accept money from corporate lobbyists or political committees as part of the problem, not the solution.

According to his campaign advisors, the goal of the criticism is to make the Democratic Party stronger and more united, especially in a general election when Republicans can be painted as the party of corporate interests. "This is a way of lifting the party up and showing it a way forward," says Jonathan Prince, Edwards' deputy campaign manager. "It's not just about money in politics, per se. It's the way that money influences the system to prevent progress and change. It's how that affects healthcare. It's how that affects the minimum wage."

The strategy harks back to former presidential candidate Howard Dean, who in 2003 captured the hearts of liberal voters by criticizing his own party in the tradition of the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone. "I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," Dean famously declared. Last Thursday in Hanover, Edwards put it this way: "We cannot triangulate our way to real change. We cannot compromise our way to real change. But we can lead to real change."

In interviews over the past week, Edwards' campaign advisors made no bones about the impact they hoped to have with these words. The new speech is meant to distinguish the campaign from others in the Democratic field. "We wanted to define the race," said Edwards' senior advisor Joe Trippi, who also managed the 2004 Dean campaign. "We wanted to put a choice that we think is pretty clear now before the American people." And the message originates with the candidate, say his advisors, not the people around him: Edwards wrote much of the new speech himself.

According to the Edwards campaign story line, the choice amounts to this: Edwards is the only candidate seeking "bold" change that would attempt to strip powerful moneyed interests of their power in Washington, a first step to passing a progressive slate of legislation through Congress. By contrast, Clinton is painted as the candidate of compromise and entrenched interests who will not be able to deliver on real change, just as she was not able to deliver on healthcare reform in the early 1990s. Obama, meanwhile, is seen as a respectable campaigner who is too timid for the bold leadership that will be required.

They are story lines that Edwards has been developing throughout August, most notably at the YearlyKos Convention for liberal bloggers in Chicago, where Clinton made the factually accurate -- if politically foolish -- assertion that many lobbyists represent "real Americans." Within minutes of her comments, the Edwards campaign distributed a press release calling on all the candidates to reject campaign contributions from lobbyists, a policy that Clinton has rejected. In a breakout session with bloggers minutes later, Edwards took on the New York senator by name. "Senator Clinton made clear that she intends to continue taking Washington lobbyist money," he said. "So the choice is very clear."

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