Prometheus 6

I noticed when John Edwards began his poverty tour that he was speaking to the insecurities of Southern white men.

It's just possible Edwards has the only campaign that can get votes from Southern white men.

Then came that Esquire Magazine cover . And yesterday the most interesting Freudian Slip in presidential political history (which you will see if YouTube ever loads)

I actually don't mind he general approach to this. I'm not hearing code talk about how it will all be wonderful if we suppress the naygurs. I'm hearing Edwards speaking of their issues in their language (I'm assuming Bob Schieffer's word choice was a slip of the tongue).

At times, the Edwards campaign has shown signs of frustration that his being a white man isn't earning him points when the news media handicap the contest. His wife, Elizabeth, caused a stir last month when she observed that "we can't make John black, we can't make him a woman" and that "those things get you a lot of press."

Though some of the rhetoric remains kind of raggedy from my perspective, I don't think it constitutes a gaff.

Pinning Hopes On Rural Voters
Campaign of Edwards, a Southerner, Sees an Advantage With White Men
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 27, 2007; A04

BERLIN, N.H. -- When a woman in the crowd shouted a question about education testing here on Saturday, former senator John Edwards made a casual farming quip.

"You don't make a hog fatter by weighing it," he said, meaning that constantly testing children does not make them smarter.

The line was, Edwards acknowledged, borrowed from a friend. But it reflected a persistent subtext of the Edwards campaign: the argument that he is the sole Southern Democrat and cultural conservative in the Democratic presidential field, making him the only top-tier candidate in his party who can appeal easily to white men.

In polls here and almost everywhere but Iowa, Edwards has lagged behind Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y) and Barack Obama (Ill.) from the outset of the marathon campaign. He has tried to provide a spark to his campaign with an increasingly sharp message that tends toward the liberal end of the spectrum on issues -- pounding away at corporate greed, calling for a revived union movement, promising universal health care and skewering President Bush.

Yet in a long tour over the weekend across a wide swath of the New Hampshire countryside -- by no means an Edwards stronghold -- he drew curious voters, almost all older and white, who said they either dislike Clinton and Obama or worry that neither can win.

In the small northern town of Berlin, one Republican woman who attended his town hall meeting said she prefers Edwards over all other candidates in both parties; he looks like her son, Bill, she said, and she liked the way he spoke. In Merrimack, farther south, a 63-year-old independent came to what he said was his first political event to complain about politicians -- and walked away saying he will consider voting for Edwards but no other Democrat.

Edwards, after initially pitching himself as the most viable candidate in Southern and Midwestern states, now avoids talking about his demographic appeal in speeches and forums. Asked about the subject in an earlier debate, Edwards said emphatically that he would not want support from anyone voting on the basis of racial or gender prejudice. He has been careful not to suggest aloud that the country is too sexist or racist to elect Clinton or Obama in a general election.

Rather, Edwards is casting himself as the candidate of rural voters, someone who understands the plight and values of family farmers (especially powerful in Iowa) and who could do in a general election what he argues Clinton and Obama could not: attract culturally conservative voters in states such as Virginia, voters who consider gun ownership an important right and aren't thrown by his drawl.