Here is another profile I wrote for my school newspaper. Full Disclosure: I like Edwards a lot.
Edwards: The Gambler
Of all the Democrats running for president, John Edwards maybe the one in the most precarious situation. As a youthful, moderate, southern Democrat, many see the North Carolina Senator as one of the party’s rising stars, but for a number of reasons the stakes are especially high for Edwards and a variety of threats cloud his political future.

John Edwards won his senate seat in 1998 and has not yet finished his first term, making him relatively inexperienced compared to some of his rivals.. Because of his very short political career, John Edward’s main selling points come from his life before he was a senator. He was the son of a textile worker and with brains, determination and luck Edwards was able to advance in life. Before running for the senate, John Edwards was a successful trial lawyer that lined the pockets of his clients and himself at the expense of insurance companies. The senator doesn’t fail to take advantage of his media friendly rags-to-riches life story, describing his work years in law as “representing families and children” and “standing up to the powerful insurance industry”; Edwards’ bootstrap biography meshes nicely with his position as the self-proclaimed “people’s senator”.
Despite his inexperience, or perhaps because of it, Edwards seems to have hit the books and has come up with fairly detailed and clear-cut positions. Edwards takes straightforward stance on Iraq, compared to other Democrats like John Kerry, whose opinions are more “complicated” or as critics say, more convoluted. In September senate speech Edwards said that he’d support a war with Iraq even if it were not sanctioned by the United Nations, using the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which was never had the support of the UN, as a precedent for military action against Iraq without UN approval. Senator Edwards also supports strengthening peaceful initiatives for preventing the proliferation, such as the Nunn-Luger program, which pays for the deactivation of Russian nuclear warheads.

On domestic policy Senator Edwards is pushing a mildly populist agenda. In 2001 Edwards joined 12 senate Democrats in voting for the Bush tax cut, but now in the face of ballooning budget deficits now supports repealing the upper income portions of the tax cut while making the parts that benefit lower income and middle class Americans permanent (currently they are due to phase out in 2010). He’s also attacked the Bush’s new stimulus package, in his response to the State of the Union Address, Edwards said that “tax cuts for the richest Americans will not create jobs or put money in the pockets of millions of Americans who need help.” As part of Edward's effort to show hositility to privellege and sympathy for the common man, Edwards has also attacked legacy admissions in higher education, something that as President he'd probably have little to power to fight.

Some see John Edwards as the Democrats only hope for victory in 2004, others see him as a lightweight without the experience or name recognition to succeed. The polls at this point our erratic and in many cases contradictory, with some many people running for the nomination, standings fluctuate from week to week. At this point polls are still more about a candidates profile than the quality of their campaign and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. One sign that Edwards is gaining momentum is President Bush’s growing concern about the North Carolina senator. Many in the Bush administration see John Edwards as the President’s chief rival. George W. Bush’s recent calls for limits on medical malpractice suits were said to be aimed at attacking Edwards, because he was a former trial lawyer. The White House has also been using Republican Representative Richard Burr, who is running for Edwards’ senate seat in 2004 and has already won the backing of the President. Burr’s campaign is designed to put pressure on John Edwards to leave the senate race, because it would be an extremely difficult balancing act for Edwards to win the approval of the Democrats on the national level and his more conservative constituency. If Bush’s plan succeeds in forcing Edwards to abandon the senate race, it would put the senator in a very insecure position; if Edwards were to lose the primaries after giving up his re-election campaign he’d likely go from an up-and-comer to a washed up and forgotten politician without