EDWARDS' GAME PLAN FOR SECOND-CHOICERS

I also caught John Edwards’ speech on the Iowa State campus, and it was his standard, populist stuff. But since he and his wife, Elizabeth, and campaign manager David Bonior were all there, and Edwards did a quick press avail afterwards, I figured I would ask all three what, exactly, the Edwards’ campaign’s strategy was for turning his latent advantage as the most common second-choice preference of potential caucus goers into a victory Thursday.

When I asked Edwards what would move the second-choicers into his column, he said: “I think I’m the strongest candidate for second choice among caucus-goers, and I think one of the reasons is this very personal, passionate message of ending corporate greed and standing up for their children and their grandchildren—period. I think that’s what they’re responding to. I had people come up to me after this event today and say they came here for Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama and now they’re for me. They just have to hear [my message], and if they hear it, they respond.”

His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, gave a slightly different response. “There are a number of things,” she told me. “One is that John has very high favorables, which means people actually like him, and the fact that when he talks about other candidates he has not gone after them personally but focused on the differences in their policies. That kind of respect for other Democrats is going to play well. People will think, ‘hey, this guy was not making personal attacks against my candidate.’” I then followed-up by asking if she thought Obama and Clinton might beat each other up akin to the infamous Howard Dean-Dick Gephardt late-stage conflagration four years ago, allowing him to come up the middle between them, she said he just needed to keep moving along on his current track.

Finally, I asked his campaign chair, former Rep. David Bonior, more specifically if he thought they would pick up some folks initially supporting Clinton or Obama on caucus night, or more support from the second-tier candidates: “It depends on the part of the state. I think Hillary is going to struggle in some of the rural areas up in the north part of the state, in the 61 counties up there because she didn’t do her work up there. So that’s possible, but I think most of ours will come from Richardson, Biden, Dodd and Kucinich.”

--Tom Schaller