Salon: "John Edwards 2.0: Can he hold the limelight until 2008?"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/26/edwards/index.html

April 26, 2005 | The first audience question John Edwards received, after addressing a packed house at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government earlier this month about his new anti-poverty campaign, had nothing to do with poverty. Instead it was about the subject nearly every Democrat has pondered since November 2004: campaign strategy. Considering how the election turned out, asked a young man describing himself as a former Howard Dean volunteer, what have you learned?

Edwards has heard this question before. In typical Edwards style, he already has a standard answer for it. "The American people want strength, conviction and a core set of beliefs that you will fight for," replied the former senator, presidential candidate and vice-presidential nominee. Discussing "how to maneuver our way through the political landscape," he added, is a fool's errand. "How about if the Democratic Party actually stands for the values the Democratic Party has always stood for?" asked Edwards. "We shouldn't change what we believe and what we stand for because of one election or even two elections."

In one sense, this is a political answer to a political question. Having experienced a campaign in which his running mate was battered with charges of inconsistency, Edwards is emphasizing that he, for one, is all about staying the course. But more generally, Edwards is right. After years of being on the defensive in elections, shifting this way and that and trying not to offend voters, the Democrats need to assert their values forcefully. One nagging question remains: What, exactly, do the Democrats stand for?

Articulating an answer -- the answer -- is what many political observers have argued the Democrats need to do, although none of them seem quite able to express it themselves. It is also the question John Edwards has taken up more directly than any other potential 2008 presidential candidate. "We stand for work and opportunity," Edwards said earlier this year. At times he has talked of creating an "opportunity society." At Harvard he spoke of allowing all Americans "the dignity and honor in hard work." The precise formula is a work in progress, but Edwards envisions a campaign in which the Democrats do not merely list good policy ideas, but emphasize the moral foundations of social justice, and depict the party's ideas as representing the essential American values.