It’s Edwards the Fighter in the Iowa Homestretch

[onehandle]

OTTUMWA, Iowa — More than 150 Iowans were rustling in their chairs at a community college here the other night, waiting for John Edwards. Mr. Edwards’s bus was parked and running outside the door, but it was nearly 45 minutes before he finally made his characteristically late entrance.

When he did appear, Mr. Edwards strode in as if he were climbing into a boxing ring. For half an hour, he talked about fighting special interests and battling corporations. He urged his audience to “rise up” against health care companies and insurance executives. Pugilistic until the end, he loudly told a story of how his father ordered him to go out and “kick that guy’s butt” after he came home from school with a bloodied nose, suggesting that was a lesson he would carry into the White House as well.

“We have an epic fight in front of us, and anybody who thinks that’s not true is living in a fantasy world,” Mr. Edwards said. “How long are we going to let insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies run this country? Every time this has happened in our country, the American people have risen up and taken action.”

Mr. Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, almost won the Iowa caucuses in 2004 by introducing, in the final weeks of the contest, a closing argument that drew huge crowds and, polls suggest, rallied supporters to his corner right up until the night of the vote. Now, Mr. Edwards, a former trial lawyer, is offering yet another closing argument to his jury of voters here. And there is evidence — from the size of his crowds to the decision by an opponent, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, to challenge him more directly in the past few days — that it may be working.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/us/politics/19edwards.html