Edwards Smacks Obama As "Kumbaya" Candidate

Edwards presents not only an ideological challenge to Clintonism but a tactical one as well. Describing the difference between him and Hillary, he said, simply, "She is the status quo and I am change." Edwards, who was the first candidate this year to present a detailed universal-health-care proposal, argued that Clinton learned the wrong lesson from her policy defeat. "For me, the lesson of the Clinton health-care experience is you can't compromise and negotiate with these people who stand between us and change--insurance companies, drug companies, lobbyists. I think she's got just the opposite conclusion. Or, at least, the way she responds seems to be an opposite conclusion: that the way to bring about change is you have to work with these people." He went on, "That's what we saw happen in the nineteen-nineties. And I think now we're going to have to actually take them on in a serious way, with the backing of the American people, and beat them."

Edwards dismisses Obama's argument that more consensus is needed in Washington. The difference between them, Edwards told me, is the difference between "Kumbaya" and "saying, 'This is a battle. It's a fight.' " When I asked whether he's a populist, he lifted a riff from his stump speech: "If it means you're willing to stand up for ordinary people, the kind of people that I grew up with, against very powerful, entrenched interests, then yes, I am a populist."

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