Two Campaigns Converge
WATERLOO, Iowa — On the same day that John Edwards traded barbs with Barack Obama over how to achieve health care reform, Edwards’s wife had a potentially awkward run-in with some stunned Obama supporters.
In between campaign rallies, Elizabeth Edwards stopped off at an Edwards campaign office in Waterloo where workers coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts for Black Hawk County. She rallied the troops and made a few phone calls to voters. Next door to the Edwards office, in the same small, brick building, is an Obama office, and as Edwards was leaving, she ran into about a dozen Obama volunteers heading inside. A moment passed. The Edwards people and the Obama people sized each other up. Then Mrs. Edwards marched over and began shaking their hands. The Obama volunteers, unsure how to react, were wary at first. But they loosened up when she commanded, “Look me in the eye! Shake my hand!” She thanked them for the work they were doing, and said at one point, “We’re on the same team.”
Then the Edwards people boarded their bus. As they rolled away, the Obama people began chanting the Obama campaign slogan: “Fired up! Ready to go!”
