By Alec MacGillis
ALLENDALE, S.C. — His rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination were busy April 26 preparing for their first televised debate, but John Edwards was 45 miles south, strolling along a dirt road in this struggling town in South Carolina’s Low Country to chat with what few people he could find among the many abandoned houses.
“We’ve got 37 million people who wake up every day in poverty,” he declared moments later to residents gathered outside a local church, under the shade of a giant live oak. “This is not okay, not in the richest country on the planet.”
As he makes his second bid for the White House, the former senator from North Carolina is sounding a clarion call of a sort not heard on the presidential campaign trail since Robert F. Kennedy’s run in 1968.
