Edwards Builds Case for ‘Politics of Hope’

Sen. John Edwards summoned his courtroom skills Wednesday night to try to convince Americans that Sen. John F. Kerry could keep the country safe while spreading opportunity to its farthest reaches.

Edwards extolled the Democratic presidential nominee, his running mate, with a speech that concluded a day of lavish personal tributes and economic policy prescriptions -- virtually all aimed at the swing voters both parties consider key to the election.

Standing before a sea of more than 4,000 delegates at the Democratic National Convention, Edwards used the talents honed as one of North Carolina’s most successful litigators -- with a jab of his finger here, a sweep of his arms there -- to make his case to a nationwide jury of millions.

Delegates later installed Kerry as the party standard-bearer with the traditional roll call of states -- and not by accident was the nomination formalized by Ohio, expected to be a key state in the general election.

Kerry arrived Wednesday morning in his fortified hometown after a six-day journey through half a dozen competitive states. Beneath a gray sky, he pulled into Charlestown Navy Yard -- home to the Old Ironsides battleship and just a cannonball’s flight from the FleetCenter convention hall -- aboard a cruise vessel dressed up in red, white and blue. A clutch of Kerry’s former Vietnam crewmates were on hand, and he fell into their bearhugs.

“We are taking this fight to the country, and we are going to win back our democracy and our future,” Kerry told a rally of supporters.

As did Kerry, Edwards played on the nominee’s Vietnam experience as he made the case that the senator from Massachusetts planned to continue in his own prime time speech tonight.

Edwards recounted Kerry’s valor during the Vietnam War, describing how the young Navy lieutenant turned his boat into enemy fire to save a fallen comrade. “Decisive. Strong. Is this not what we need in a commander in chief?” he asked.

Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, sought to turn back the relentless GOP attacks on Kerry by casting the fall election as not just a battle of ideas, but also as a struggle between divisiveness and unity.

“This is where you come in. Between now and November, you -- the American people -- you can reject this tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what’s possible,” Edwards said.

He resurrected the central theme of his own presidential bid, a nation cleaved by race and class, suggesting a Kerry administration could end the divide.

“The truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas,” Edwards said. “One for people who have lived the American dream and don’t have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else, who struggle to make ends meet every single day.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Edwards said in a refrain he repeated several times. “We can build one America.”

He also spoke of race and civil rights -- issues rarely mentioned at a convention scripted almost entirely for the benefit of middle-of-the-road and independent voters.

“I have heard some discussions and debates about where and in front of what audiences we would talk about race, equality and civil rights. Well, I have an answer to that question: everywhere,” Edwards said, drawing one of the evening’s longest and loudest ovations.

“This is not an African American issue, not a Latino issue, not an Asian American issue. This is an American issue.”

He promised tax breaks under a Kerry administration for companies that kept jobs at home, and investment in new technologies to expand employment opportunities. He proposed tax breaks for individuals to help pay for healthcare and college tuition.

He called for boosting the minimum wage, “finishing the job on welfare reform” and ensuring that no working American goes hungry or lives in poverty.

“Not in our America,” he said three times, drawing a steadily stronger ovation.

New programs, he said, would be financed by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and repealing tax breaks for companies “that outsource your jobs.”

Inside the convention hall, Democrats broadened their attack on Bush.

After two days of criticizing his foreign policy, speakers turned to a wide-ranging assault on the president’s economic policies, saying the flight of jobs overseas and soaring costs of healthcare, college tuition and gasoline were creating an unprecedented squeeze on the middle class.

“Americans are working harder and more productively than ever before,” said Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, whose prime-time speaking slot reflected her state’s political significance. “And yet now we face the serious prospect that for the first time in our history, our children will fare worse than their parents.”

She cited Kerry’s promise to create 10 million jobs in four years and to cut the cost of healthcare.

“With a tenacious president, we can give the citizens what they desperately need,” she said. “Good jobs. Good jobs. Good jobs.”

Throughout the day and well into the night, one speaker after another referred to Sept. 11 and criticized Bush’s response, working to undermine what has long been one of his strongest political suits.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont accused the president of squandering the international goodwill that followed the terrorist attacks, blaming the administration’s “go-it-alone” policies.

“They’ve alienated our allies,” Leahy said. “They’ve undermined our national security with a misguided rush to invade Iraq.”

Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who briefly competed in the party’s primaries, cited the recent recommendations of the 9/11 commission. “Most of these are obvious,” he said. “Sadly, over 1,000 days after Sept. 11, none of them are in place. The ideas are there. It’s the leadership that’s missing.”

However, all of that was before the national TV networks -- in effect the eyes and ears of the nation -- tuned in to the final portion of the proceedings.

Allotted some of those precious minutes, Edwards sought to present a blend of optimism and toughness, compassion and greater specificity than any other convention speaker.

He was once Kerry’s most tenacious rival -- the last to drop out of a Democratic primary field that had numbered 10 contestants. The two differed over a handful of issues -- most notably trade, with Edwards calling for greater restrictions -- but their cross words were few and never very harsh.

The North Carolina senator, who surrendered his seat to seek the White House, spent several months after the primaries laboring on Kerry’s behalf and building on his own reputation for charisma. Once he was picked, Edwards fell easily into the subordinate role expected of a running mate, as shown Wednesday night by his testimonial on Kerry.

Roughly half his remarks Wednesday were a slightly retooled version of his own presidential campaign speech, including the reference to a composite mother seated at her kitchen table, fretting over how to pay the bills and feed her children -- while her husband is in Iraq. “She thinks she is alone ... we want her to know we hear her. And it’s time to bring opportunity and an equal chance to her door.”

While making his pitch for Kerry, Edwards also answered several of the attacks he had faced from Republicans since joining the Democratic ticket this month.

Edwards defended his work as a trial attorney who won huge damage awards in medical malpractice cases. Critics have portrayed him as an ambulance-chasing symbol of litigation run amok. But the senator cast himself as a champion of the proverbial little guy.

“I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with,” said Edwards, who recounted his youth in a small Southern mill town. “For two decades, I stood with families and children against big HMOs and big insurance companies.”

Republicans have also criticized Edwards for his lack of foreign policy experience, suggesting he and Kerry are both ill-suited for the dangerous world after Sept. 11.

Edwards cited his service on the Senate Intelligence Committee and joined the criticism of Bush for failing to act more quickly on the report of the 9/11 commission, now a major issue in the presidential campaign.

“I can tell you that when we’re in office, it won’t take us three years to get the reforms in our intelligence that are necessary to keep the American people safe,” he said. “We will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make sure that never happens again in our America.”

Narrowing his eyes and turning to the cameras, he declared: “John and I will have one clear, unmistakable message for Al Qaeda and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you.”

Kerry will wrap up the convention tonight with his much anticipated acceptance speech -- perhaps his best chance to make his case directly to the American people without the hurly-burly of campaign competition, or the filter of media coverage.

Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Michael Finnegan, James Gerstenzang, Matea Gold, Maria L. La Ganga and Robert Schiff contributed to this report.

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A feeling that victory is in the bag

Contents of the ritzy gift bag handed out at a Wednesday night party honoring Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland:

* Brighton champagne flutes

* Confections made in Robbins, N.C., hometown of vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

* A customized Beanie Baby donkey named Lefty * Gift certificate for a two-night stay on Kauai

* Bar of soap emblazoned with a donkey.

The bags, put together by an Encino firm called Gigi Bags, were given to politicians and celebrity hobnobbers during a party at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Convention carbs

All that Democratic excitement has been packaged, in one convenient 5.5-ounce box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The “Limited Convention Edition” of the gooey snack includes donkey- and star-shaped pasta, and the standard neon-orange powdered “cheese.” Democracy -- only 390 calories per serving.

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“That concludes the roll call for The Democratic National Convention

. Congratulations to John Kerry.” -- Alice Germond, DNC secretary.