Yepsen: Don't Rule Out Surges by Edwards, Thompson

Dec. 18, 2007 — -- There's a lot of buzz about the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for Democratic caucus votes in Iowa. And there's also a lot of talk about the fight between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee on the Republican side.

Can Clinton recover and overtake Obama's narrow lead? Can Romney stop Huckabee to reclaim the top spot in the GOP race? Buzzzzzz.

All that tends to overlook two other candidates: Democrat John Edwards and Republican Fred Thompson. They're both showing real potential to come up fast here at the end.

One reason is the indecision of a lot of caucus-goers in both parties. This cycle, polls have shown around half the likely caucus-goers in each party could still be persuaded to change their minds. In other words, the so-called front-runners haven't closed the sale.

Both Edwards and Thompson are pouring time and resources into Iowa these days. Edwards built a respectable organization in Iowa in his 2004 campaign. He was the front-runner here for a while, then gradually slipped as the attention focused on celebrity candidates Clinton and Obama.

But Clinton got off to a slow start and was never as popular here as she was around the country. Lately she, her campaign and her husband Bill have made mistakes that have left her struggling to right her top-heavy ship. Her campaign believes weekend endorsements by the Des Moines Register, Congressman Leonard Boswell and former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey will pump some new energy into her campaign.

By contrast, Edwards and his people never quit, no matter how bleak things got in recent months. On Monday, he picked up Iowa first lady Mari Culver's endorsement. And he still shows enough strength in rural Iowa that Obama is devoting considerable time to those areas these days in an effort to take some of the anti-Hillary vote from Edwards.

Proof of Edwards' uptick and Obama's jitters about him came Monday in Spencer, when Obama told a crowd: "Senator Edwards, who is a good guy, he's been talking a lot about 'I'm going to fight the lobbyists and the special interests in Washington.' Well, the question you have to ask is: Were you fighting for (citizens) when you were in the Senate?"