After announcing his plans the night before on YouTube (see video to the left), former Sen. John Edwards formally announced his candidacy for president while working in the flood-ravaged city New Orleans.   It was not your typical announcement with large crowds and fanfare.  Instead Edwards made the announcement to highlight the plight of New Orleans and the difference individual Americans were making by volunteering thier time and efforts.  New Orleans became an example of the “Two Americas” that Edwards campaigned on in 2004.

Those cheering on Mr. Edwards’s antipoverty crusade include party strategist Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in his 2000 presidency bid. Recalling Mr. Edwards’s past emphasis on the “Two Americas” theme, she says: “In 2004, that message went largely unheard. To his credit, he kept at it. And Katrina demonstrated the validity of that message.”

While his 2004 campaign theme was “Two Americas,” it is now called ”One America.” 

From the Wall Street Journal:

The former senator essentially has been campaigning since 2004. He has kept most of his top staff and donors together, and operatives in key places such as Iowa; he rates high in polls in that first caucus state. His email list has grown to more than 700,000, and union leaders are enamored of his populist message, Democrats say. Mr. Edwards’s recent enlistment of labor stalwart and former Michigan Rep. David Bonior as campaign manager was plainly a bid for union support.

After the 2004 election, Mr. Edwards became director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has solicited policy ideas for fighting poverty. He previewed his emerging antipoverty program most comprehensively in an address in June at Washington’s National Press Club.

In that speech, he set a national goal of ending poverty in 30 years for the 37 million Americans living below the poverty line, lifting one-third of them above it in each of the next three decades. His “Working Society” agenda would mean a higher federal minimum wage, reduced taxes for low-income workers, universal health care, and one million new housing vouchers for working families, to help them find homes in neighborhoods with better schools.

Mr. Edwards proposes “Work Bonds” to provide tax credits to match low-wage workers’ own long-term savings. He calls for the government to partner with nonprofit organizations to create a million “stepping stone” jobs, to help welfare recipients and others get experience on local projects so they can go on to better-paying private-sector jobs. And he would open “second-chance schools” aimed at the increased number of high-school students who drop out before graduating.

Mindful of the current headlines, however, Mr. Edwards has paired his domestic agenda with a call to immediately reduce U.S. forces in Iraq by at least 40,000. And he has taken pains to put his domestic vision in a global context. As he put it at the National Press Club six months ago: “How we work to improve our country and lift people up is also critical to restoring American leadership in the world.”