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Edwards says election is personal { December 2008 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/politics/national/20080107_N_H__a_test_for_Edwards_populism.htmlhttp://www.philly.com/inquirer/politics/national/20080107_N_H__a_test_for_Edwards_populism.html
Posted on Mon, Jan. 7, 2008
N.H. a test for Edwards' populism
By Thomas Fitzgerald
Inquirer Staff Writer
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Her voice quavering, Hilda Sarkisyan said a health insurance company killed her little girl, and begged New Hampshire voters yesterday to help elect Democrat John Edwards president to save other families from a similar plight.
"We have to put a stop to these people," Sarkisyan, of Los Angeles, said yesterday. "They cannot tell us who's going to live and who's going to die."
In building his case against the evils of corporate greed on the stump, Edwards has often cited the story of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old girl whose death became a national news story last month after her family's insurer denied coverage for a liver transplant and then belatedly approved it.
But this was the first time the former North Carolina senator had her family on the campaign trail with him. The display of raw emotion gave a tent-revival feel to his political rally two days before the New Hampshire primary. Many in the crowd of about 500 at the Franco-American Centre seemed to be crying as the girl's mother, father and brother spoke.
Edwards has run a populist campaign, as a kind of modern-day William Jennings Bryan, against corporations and their lobbyists as barriers to change.
But it is an open question, analysts say, how far anticorporate fire and brimstone will take Edwards in a state that - in its most populous southern region - is changing from a manufacturing hub to an extension of the Boston metropolis, a home to latte-drinking, two-income professional families.
" 'Us versus the corporations' doesn't work that well," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "This is a prosperous state, and many Democrats here work down in Boston for large corporations like Fidelity Investments."
Joe Trippi, Edwards' senior strategist, said that opinion misses the point. "People keep acting like this place is a monolith," Trippi said, adding that Edwards only needs to do well enough to win some delegates here to keep fighting. His implication was that some people in New Hampshire also are feeling economic insecurity.
In brief remarks to the rally, Edwards said that college graduates are also vulnerable to losing their jobs.
"What kind of fighter do you want to have on your side when your family is faced with this kind of crisis, when your job is being shipped overseas?" Edwards said. "If I am elected, I will fight for you, I will fight for your kids, I will fight for your grandkids, with every fiber of my being."
Edwards is competing with Sen. Barack Obama for the vast majority of voters who polls say favor change over experience in what has been the dichotomy of the Democratic campaign.
Asked by a reporter after the event why he believed he was a better agent for change than Obama, Edwards said that the issues were more "academic and philosophical" to his rival while they were "personal" to himself.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign took a swipe at Edwards for, in the words of a spokesman, using the Sarkisyans as "talking points."
Edwards and aides said that the family contacted the campaign through an Armenian American organization and volunteered to help.
Using the event to launch a 36-hour bout of serial campaigning his campaign called "Marathon for the Middle Class," Edwards sought to capitalize on a passionate TV debate performance from the night before.
During the debate, he teamed with Obama to attack Clinton, the former front-runner in the Democratic race, as the candidate of the Washington status quo.
The latest opinion polling has found Obama, who won last week's Iowa caucuses, gaining and edging ahead of Clinton. Less noticed is a small bump for Edwards, who squeaked past the former first lady for second place in the Iowa caucuses by three-tenths of one percentage point.
While Clinton was sharpening her critique of Obama yesterday, Edwards loomed as a potential threat to her on another flank.
Kristal Gahre came to the rally because she was impressed with Edwards' debate performance - "the others seemed drained," she said - and walked away persuaded to vote for him.
"He has the kind of energy you need to fight against the companies and the lobbyists, and that's a good thing," said Gahre, 28, whose husband had just lost his job as a computer help-desk worker when his company shifted the function overseas.
Helen Curry, a home health-care aide who has diabetes and high blood pressure but no health insurance, said she planned to vote for Edwards because he speaks for those in her situation.
"He's the only one who cares about the working poor, and I'm the working poor," said Curry, 60. "We're getting screwed, big time."
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