TAKE THIS JOB.(The Talk of the Town)

John Edwards's advance teams like to arrange the places where he appears on the campaign trail to resemble theatres in the round. Edwards holds forth from floor level or on a low stage, wearing a cordless clip-on microphone that leaves his arms free for sweeping, two-handed, umpire-like gestures. He seems to have sprung up from the crowd, which is very much how he wishes to be regarded--as a man of the people and the voice of the people at once. By contrast, John Kerry usually stands on a stage, his shoes roughly level with the eyes of the people beneath him. The effect of being addressed from on high is amplified by Kerry's lanky figure--six feet four and bony--and his habit of emphasizing his points with long, jabbing wags of his index finger. When the two Democrats appear simultaneously on a split screen, Edwards could be mistaken for Kerry's sign-language interpreter.

Actually, the seemingly spontaneous Edwards has been delivering the same stump speech--verbatim, and gesture for gesture--for months now, while Kerry, despite looking like an equestrian statue (man and horse) and sounding like a relic from radio's golden age, has been more responsive to the shifting issues and moods of the political season. But Edwards's tactic gave him a surprising advantage. As President Bush's vulnerability on the issues of free trade and job loss became apparent, Edwards succeeded in casting himself as the steadfast champion of the disenfranchised, and Kerry has been made to appear as if he were responding to his challenger's agenda.

Nevertheless, Kerry has been racking up endorsements from organized labor, and, shortly after dawn on primary day in Wisconsin, a few hundred of his supporters huddled in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hilton in downtown Milwaukee under the banner of a consortium of nineteen unions that together represent some five million workers. They were predominantly heavyset and gray-haired; there weren't many women among them, and, despite a few alarmingly tanned union bosses, nearly everyone was white. Whenever a speaker denounced Bush or praised Kerry, the crowd erupted in a frenzy--roaring, whistling, and waving campaign signs. But at the back of the room Guy Prickett, a sturdily built, full-bearded assembler for Mercury--the boat-motor manufacturer--stood with his hands shoved defiantly in his pockets, silently shaking his head.

Prickett, who had come to the Hilton with his wife, a Kerry supporter, still hadn't decided whom he'd vote for. Pressed to venture a guess, he said, "We got four hundred jobs we're losing at my plant--four hundred jobs going to China," and he allowed that he was inclined to vote for Edwards. Just then, Kerry was hailed as the next President of the United States. Prickett winced. "Not so fast, John Kerry," he said, echoing Edwards's line at a ...