MANCHESTER, N.H. (Jan. 6) — John Edwards and Barack Obama joined forces Saturday night, pouncing on Hillary Clinton and marketing themselves as the only two “agents of change” in the Democratic campaign.
In a heated debate, Edwards and Obama remained civil toward each other, acknowledging their differences on key issues such as health care. But they maintained a united front against Clinton, who until the Iowa caucuses Thursday, had long been the front-runner nationally and in New Hampshire.
In Saturday’s debate, Edwards overtly allied himself with Obama with a direct comparison on their demands for change. “Senator Obama and I have differences, we do,” said Edwards, the former North Carolina senator. “We have a fundamental difference about the way you bring about change. But both of us are powerful voices for change.”
Edwards’ unofficial alliance with Obama began earlier in the day after a rally in Concord, signaling the path he would take in the debate later. “Tonight in the debate there will be two change candidates on the stage,” Edwards said. “I think New Hampshire voters will vote for change and they’re going to have a choice between two change candidates.”
On the debate stage, Edwards went so far as to defend Obama from an attack by Clinton on Obama’s voting record on funding for the Iraq war. “What will occur every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of status quo are going to attack,” Edwards said, gesturing to Clinton. “Every single time.”
Edwards went on to suggest that Clinton was on the defensive because her lead in national and New Hampshire polls has been slipping. The first post-Iowa poll by The Concord Monitor released Saturday shows Obama (34%) narrowly ahead of Clinton (33%). Edwards was the choice of 23% of voters in the poll.
“I didn’t hear these kind of attacks from Senator Clinton when she was ahead,” Edwards said. “Now that she’s not, we hear them.”
Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, described such alliances as common in politics. But, Scala said, Edwards and Obama came across as almost a tag-team. “I kind of half expected them to bump knuckles by the time they were done,” he said. Candidates tend to have a mentality of “the opponent of my opponent is my friend,” he said.
Edwards aligned with Obama in an effort to finish ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire, Scala said, and “stay a part of the story.”
“I think he knows that once you leave New Hampshire, it’s difficult to be the third wheel,” he said. “If he can somehow overtake Clinton here and at least somehow finish close to Clinton, that would be huge for him and keep his campaign going.”
Bradford E. Cook, an attorney who writes a political column for the New Hampshire Business Review, argued in an interview that the Edwards-Obama “team” was just a coincidence. He emphasized that candidates at this stage naturally align themselves against one rival.
“I don’t think it was conscious,” Cook said. “It was just a commonality of the issues they have against Clinton and the mutual advantage of pointing them out. Both of them want to win the election.”
Representatives for both the Edwards and Obama campaigns praised the candidates working together. New Hampshire Congressman Paul Hodes, who endorsed Obama in July, described the relationship between Edwards and Obama on stage as the most interesting development of the night.
“They recognize that their messages, to the extent that they’re both talking about change and politics in a different way, resonate together,” Hodes said.
After the debate, Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, played up the relationship between her husband and Obama. “He has nothing against Barack Obama,” she said. “They just disagree on how to bring about change. Barack Obama is a good man.”
Despite the friendliness between the two candidates, Scala, the political scientist, dismissed the idea of a move by Edwards to try to become Obama’s eventual vice presidential candidate. “I don’t think that’s the way he’s going,” Scala said. “Edwards is in it to win it. He doesn’t want to be number two.”
(Heath D. Williams, a junior newspaper major, is covering the New Hampshire primary for The Pilot of Southern Pines, N.C.)
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