Edwards not afraid to get his hands dirty (Las Vegas Sun)

[Catchawave]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2006/apr/13/566636820.html

April 13, 2006

Edwards not afraid to get his hands dirty
Former senator popular at miners convention
By J. Patrick Coolican
Las Vegas Sun


A couple of miners stood outside the Riviera, smoking cigarettes and lamenting that John Edwards isn't president, although they said they'll work for him if he runs in 2008.

"He's a common man like you and me," said Kenny Lively, who had just seen the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee speak at the United Mine Workers of America convention going on this week. "He don't feel like he's above everybody."

Edwards, who now runs an anti-poverty center at the University of North Carolina, had just won numerous standing ovations from the miners - mostly white, working-class men from coal-rich states such as Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The listeners were the kind Democrats have lost in recent elections, but Edwards captivated them with a fiery populism in remarks Tuesday that framed economic issues such as poverty, health care and labor rights in stark moral terms, a way of talking usually chided by Republicans as "class warfare."