In Iowa Run-Up, Edwards Uses Fighting Words

"I don't ever want to hear, son, about you starting a fight," he said his father told him. "But you listen to me and listen to me clearly. I don't want to ever hear that you walked away from one. Because if you're not willing to stand up for yourself and if you're not willing to fight, no one will stand up for you."

The enemy he sees is corporate America and corporate greed. His message seeks not to unite the country but to finish what he describes as "an epic struggle" against forces that are killing America -- destroying jobs, holding down wages, putting people out of work and denying them medical care.

"You need somebody in the arena who will never back down," he says.

He casts America's challenges in terms of morality and immorality. Speaking of tax policies that have encouraged companies to send jobs overseas, he says, "This is insanity -- I mean complete insanity."

The rich have an "iron-fisted grip" on democracy and won't let go through negotiations. "Anybody who suggests that we don't have an epic fight on our hands is living in Never-Never Land," he says.

He condemns wealthy corporate CEOs and "paid mercenaries" in Iraq with equal fervor: They are destroying the future of America.

"When will this stop?" he cried out at a rally in Knoxville, Iowa, on Saturday.

"With you!" a voice responded from the audience.

"With you and with me," he replied.

His rivals scoff at the angry populism coming from Edwards in these final days. They believe it is an invention, saying that what Edwards now talks about bears little resemblance to the record he compiled in the Senate.

It is hypocritical, they say, coming from someone who grew rich in courtrooms and who now lives in an enormous house in North Carolina. It is phony, they argue, to condemn big money and become the beneficiary of an independent expenditure campaign run by a former campaign manager.

None of this bothers Edwards. He knows what the critics say, but he couldn't care less, believing that the attacks haven't hurt him. He believes he is connecting with the anger and unrest that many Americans feel about the state of the country and especially the way Washington works. He promises not to fix the system but to blow it up.