Edwards banks on veteran caucusgoers to pull off Iowa

WATERLOO, Iowa -- Democrat John Edwards is not a celebrity, he hasn't written a best seller and he won't be smashing any glass ceilings for women or minorities.

Still, as he fights to stay in contention in Iowa's leadoff presidential contest, he does have at least one thing that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama don't have: most of his supporters already have experience with this state's sometimes daunting system of caucuses held in each of 1,784 precincts.

Retired postmaster John Backer, 62, of Greene, is one of them. Come Jan. 3, as he has done in the past, he'll join a few dozen neighbors at the community center and stand up for Edwards. "I know almost everybody in town," Backer says. "I feel comfortable going there."

Most polls of Iowa show Edwards trailing his two rivals, yet still within the margins of error and within reach of winning. They also show that as many as three-quarters of his backers qualify as "likely caucusgoers" — that is, they've already been to a caucus.

Edwards will need every vote he can get to stay in the game. Political observers and even some Edwards advisers say the former North Carolina senator, his party's 2004 vice presidential nominee, cannot afford to repeat the second-place finish he pulled off as a fresh face in 2004.

If he doesn't win Iowa or come very close this time, "we're done," says Rob Tully, a former state party chairman and Edwards stalwart, adding he likes his friend's chances.

Though Edwards has been cultivating Iowans since 2004, he last led the Democratic field here in August. Iowa analysts attribute his stall to the "three Hs" — his $400 haircut, 28,000-square-foot home and work for a hedge fund.

"He had a terrible spring and summer. By late summer he had stopped any further slide, but he hasn't been able to reverse it," says Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Iowa's Drake University.

One reason is that Edwards had planned to be the main alternative to Clinton. Instead he's one of two main alternatives, and he's being overshadowed by the other one.