JOHN EDWARDS WOULD PROBABLY MAKE THE BEST PRESIDENT. DOES HE HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN THE NOMINATION?

In the 2004 California primary I voted for John Edwards. I had met him almost a year before that day-- my friend Casey worked for his campaign and he introduced us and I had been very impressed-- but I voted for him because the corporately-controlled mass media had already destroyed the only Democrat they truly feared, the only Democrat preaching earth-shattering change, my candidate, Howard Dean. This year, it is Edwards who is the candidate of real change. Everyone I know seems to think he'd make the best president but they all feel his quest for the White House is hopeless and that it is either the hideously flawed Hillary Clinton or the slightly less flawed Barack Obama who is destined to do battle with whichever one of the evil and pathetic pygmies Republican extremists who participate in their party's primaries decide is more tolerable than None of the Above.

The perspective I've gained from my trip through south Asia and my ability to spend hours that are normally spent at the keyboard just meditating, has made it clearer and clearer to me that John Edwards is the only person remotely able to win the nomination who would be the best and most courageous and unbought president. I've disagreed with him on plenty but he's grown tremendously since I me him in person 4 years ago. He's a long shot but if I were a Democrat in Iowa or New Hampshire, I'd be doing all I could to help create the momentum that will save our country from more years of, at best, compromised mediocrity of leadership.

This week's Newsweek features Edwards on the cover, like a beacon of hope. But Newsweek isn't sugar-coating anything. Things look bleak for Edwards right now and it will take a great deal to turn things around at this point, things his campaign have been working on very diligently for a long time.

Things haven't worked out quite the way he planned. He'd envisioned the campaign coming down to a two-person race between him and Hillary Clinton—- a match-up he thought he could win by exploiting her divisiveness and high negatives. Barack Obama spoiled that by rivaling Edwards in charisma and optimism, siphoning away money and attention. And early missteps—the $400 haircut, the 25,000-square-foot mansion, the job at a hedge fund—raised questions about his authenticity and fed an impression among some voters that his common-man populism was more conceit than conviction. Now, with the Iowa caucuses just a few weeks away, he finds himself trying to talk his way up from third place.

...On the stump, Edwards campaigns with the urgency of a man who is running out of time. He might be. A third-place showing in Iowa would likely spell the end of his campaign, and his presidential ambitions, for good. Yet Edwards believes he can still come from behind for an upset win. Political reporters may like the story line (and simplicity) of depicting Iowa as a Clinton-Obama smackdown, but Edwards's strategists say that the media and pollsters are overlooking a more important, if less glamorous, story.

For months, Edwards has been rounding up support in the state's rural precincts where the front runners have paid less attention. While Obama and Clinton have drawn crowds in the thousands in places like Des Moines and Ames, Edwards has been winning over people in tiny towns like Sac City (population: 2,189). That's important, the strategists say, because under Iowa's arcane caucus rules, a precinct where 25 people show up to vote gets the same number of delegates as a place that packs in 2,500. In other words, even if he loses to Obama and Clinton in the state's bigger cities, he can still win by wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts that other candidates have ignored. "The bulk of our support is in small and medium counties," says Jennifer O'Malley, Edwards's Iowa state director. O'Malley says Edwards has visited all 99 counties in the state; the campaign has so far trained captains covering 90 percent of all 1,781 precincts. Rural voters are sometimes reluctant to caucus, so the campaign has been enlisting respected community leaders to encourage first-timers to get past their apathy or fear.

The rest of the Newsweek story is a shallow, second-rate bio but worth reading through for a feel for what makes Edwards tick-- and why a leader like him would be preferable to any of the Establishment shills more likely to wind up with the nomination. He's also got a wife I'd love to see as first lady. And wouldn't it be completely sickening if the Democrats offer some corporate-friendly, cautious Insider hack, like Clinton or Obama, and the Republicans end up with a pseudo-populist?