Even good news seems to be followed by bad for Edwards. He appeared to score a coup last week at a Washington meeting of 1,500 politically active members of the Service Employees International Union, when SEIU president Andrew Stern said Edwards "moved from having almost no support to being one of the top three candidates that the members leaving this conference are interested in." But Edwards' supporters seemed to overreach by distributing a newspaper report that Edwards had surged with SEIU officials while Kerry had fallen out of contention for an endorsement, and an SEIU official had to deny that assertion, saying only that Edwards had made a good impression with the group.

Meanwhile, Edwards' plan to use his war chest -- he raised $11.9 million since Jan. 1, making him second among the Democratic contenders -- to buy television ads in Iowa and New Hampshire hasn't paid off in a huge surge yet.

After nearly a month of advertising in New Hampshire, Edwards has crawled from 2 percent support in the middle of August to 6 percent in a Boston Globe-commissioned poll after Labor Day. But his ranking in the polls, 5th place, didn't budge. In Iowa, after he ran ads for two weeks, he remained at 6 percent in the polls but dropped from 4th to 5th place after Lieberman garnered 12 percent in a Research 2000 survey.

So how does Edwards hope to prevail? His neighboring state of South Carolina, which will host the most important primary immediately following the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, provides a ray of hope. Edwards began airing ads there on Aug. 15 and according to two polls conducted by Zogby International, he jumped from 5 percent and 4th place (one slot behind Sharpton) to 10 percent and a one-point lead over Dean for first place. While statistically that's not a real lead, psychologically it's a boost for the campaign.

Edwards' campaign chairman, Ed Turlington, admits South Carolina is a "must win" state for his candidate, just as Iowa is said to be a must win for Gephardt of neighboring Missouri. Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman who now chairs the party in Richland County, S.C., predicted that only two or three of the top five Democrats will survive Iowa and New Hampshire to make it down to his state's primary, pointing to the year 2000, when there were seven GOP candidates running, but only two survived to South Carolina: Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"If Edwards survives Iowa and New Hampshire and is considered viable he would be in a good position to carry [the state]," said Fowler.

But survival for Edwards means moving up in the polls in both states. Political analyst Charlie Cook says if Edwards fails to finish third in Iowa or New Hampshire it would be almost impossible to win South Carolina.

Even some of Edwards' backers admit he may have planned wrong by focusing on raising money early rather than hitting the stump.

"I would have run a different sort of campaign," says Michael Bauer, a Chicago-based lawyer, businessman and political activist who is on Edwards' national finance committee and steering committee. Bauer agreed that Edwards should have put a little less emphasis on raising money and more on campaigning. John Edwards clearly had a visibility problem from the start. "I can't tell you how many people ask me who I'm supporting and then ask 'Who's that?' It affects your ability to do national fundraising," said Bauer.

But the fundraiser says Edwards' decision not to run again for Senate gave his campaign a real boost. "There were starting to be a great many doubts about whether he's really in it and not hedging his bets," said Bauer. "He's taking a 'burning the ship at the shore' strategy that's a good message to supporters that he's really in this."

It should also be said that thanks to Edwards' early fundraising prowess, he's assured of surviving until the third round of primary battles.

"We have enough money to carry us through the Feb. 3 date and to run a media campaign in every one of those states ... and compete at the level we need to," said Eileen Kotecki, the co-chair of Edwards' national finance campaign.

Edwards' staff is hoping that with his Southern roots and his place as a moderate who's arguably more centrist than Dean, Kerry and Gephardt, Edwards could thrive in states such as Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota and Oklahoma, which are scheduled to host primaries on Feb. 3.

If he doesn't do well enough in those moderate states to earn the nomination -- or at least the No. 2 spot on the ticket -- it's questionable whether Edwards, once the golden boy and a great hope of the Democratic Party, will be able to fulfill the political future many expected for him.

But Elizabeth Edwards, at least, says she isn't worried about her husband. "There has never been in our married life, and we've been married for 26 years, a time when we faced a problem he didn't think he couldn't solve. He always thought if he just worked hard enough at it and put all the resources he had to it he could solve people's problem."

Asked after last week's debate how he would maintain his public profile after leaving the Senate should he fail to capture the nomination, Edwards struck a resolute pose.

"I absolutely refuse to accept that proposition," he said. "I intend to be the nominee and that's exactly what's going to happen."

His Hollywood good looks combined with his steely determination in the face of adversity would have made the moment perfect for a movie about the making of a president. Too bad all the television cameras were crowded around Howard Dean standing a few yards away. George Clooney, who was filming the first episode of HBO's new inside-the-Beltway series "K Street," stood nearby as well, but he was signing an autograph.

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