Thompson Loses Fundraiser, and Plane

Not this time for Edwards. Stumping through Iowa on Sunday and Monday, he couldn't stop talking about Hillary Clinton. He says she takes millions from the defense and health-care industries and won't be candid about her positions on various issues, such as how she will remove troops from Iraq and how she cast a vote that could lead to a war with Iran.

"I don't think anything has changed about me," Edwards said in an interview with The Washington Post. "I find this whole discussion interesting because it ignores the 20 years of my life before presidential politics where I fought powerful corporations. Those were tough, hard-nosed battles. I had to be honest and I couldn't make the jury mad, but I had to very tough with the people I was opposed to because they were tough."

With the campaign now beyond what he dubbed the "celebrity stage," Edwards said, it is critical to explain to voters his precise disagreements with Clinton.

While he used a policy speech in Iowa City to question sharply why Clinton had not put out a specific plan for getting troops out of Iraq, he seems to go out of the way to criticize her politely, always noting that she has "the right to her opinion," but noting his disagreement with her. On Monday in Iowa City, Edwards spent much of a foreign policy speech slamming Clinton for a lack of candor on Iraq.

"With less than 60 days to the caucus, Senator Clinton still has not given a specific answers to specific questions," Edwards said. "How many troops will she withdraw, and when will she withdraw them? All she's said is that she will meet with her generals within two months of taking office. That's not a plan. That's not even a real promise. It's the promise of a planning meeting," he said to laughter from a crowd of more than 100 on the campus of University of Iowa.

But just to make sure voters know it's the same John Edwards on the stump, the candidate ends each speech by noting he is optimistic and hopeful about America, saying, "This is not just politics -- this is the great moral challenge of our generation."

-- Perry Bacon Jr.