Obama competes with Edwards to be antipoverty candidate

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is challenging John Edwards's claim as the antipoverty candidate, speaking of his work with the inner-city poor just as Edwards has championed the downtrodden in rural mountain districts.

The two hit strikingly familiar themes Wednesday in competing speeches on an issue that usually gets little attention in modern presidential politics but Democrats have pushed to the forefront.

Obama spoke in the Washington neighborhood of Anacostia as Edwards wrapped up an eight-state poverty tour in Wise, Va., and Prestonsburg, Ky., deep in the hardscrabble region of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.

Both invoked a Democratic icon of a previous age, Robert F. Kennedy, who drew attention to the country's poor some four decades ago before he was assassinated.

Speaking at the Floyd County courthouse in Prestonsburg, where Kennedy ended his poverty tour in 1968, Edwards said he wants ''America to remember what he did decades ago. I want you to join us to end the work Bobby Kennedy started.''

Obama alluded to Kennedy's tour and repeated a question that Kennedy uttered throughout his address: ''How can a country like this allow it?''

The first-term Illinois senator argued that he has had a long-standing interest in helping the poor, dating to his first job after college as a community organizer in Chicago. The remark was a veiled jab at Edwards, a wealthy lawyer who was born poor.

''This kind of poverty is not an issue I just discovered for the purposes of a campaign; it's the cause that led me to a life of public service almost 25 years ago,'' Obama said.

Edwards's spokesman, Eric Schultz, responded by saying, ''This is another example of Edwards leading on the issues and other candidates following.''

Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, said his interest in poverty was not born of politics. He said his background was so humble that his father had to borrow $50 to bring him home from the hospital when he was born. Although John Edwards eventually became a successful trial lawyer, he said he continued to fight for the less fortunate in his legal career and as a North Carolina senator and beyond.

''Poverty is the cause of my life,'' he said in his prepared remarks. ''I worked on it before I got into politics.''

Obama's first job was working for a coalition of churches on Chicago's south side, seeking to help rescue a troubled neighborhood. He has been a state legislator and taught at a law school.

Before entering politics, Edwards was on the board of Urban Ministries, a religious group that helped the poor near the North Carolina capital, Raleigh. He also established the Wade Edwards Learning Lab, in honor of his late son, to help disadvantaged children with their schoolwork.

After losing the 2004 election, he helped establish a poverty center at the University of North Carolina.

Obama vowed to ''retire the phrase 'working poor' in our time.'' Edwards said he would eliminate poverty within a generation.

Besides trying to one-up each other on their antipoverty credentials, each also tried to portray himself as a Washington outsider. Both blamed Washington for failing to help the poor.

''The streets here are close to our Capitol but far from the people it represents,'' Obama said. ''They suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money and influence and power.''

''Washington's response has been, 'Greed is good,''' Edwards said in an echo of Michael Douglas's signature line from the 1987 movie Wall Street.

Both also said the problem cannot be solved by Washington alone, but families also must be strengthened. Both candidates promised to fight the move of jobs overseas, raise the minimum wage, invest in education and create transitional jobs. (Nedra Pickler, AP)