DUNLAP, Iowa – Undeterred by the pungent aroma wafting up from the chutes below, John Edwards paused on the walkway to point admiringly down at one group of cattle.

The gesture gained him a respectful nod from Jim Schaben, who founded the Dunlap Livestock Auction 57 years ago.

“Those are going to be the roasts and the choice cuts,” said Schaben, 81, clearly approving Edwards' taste.

But Edwards could not be induced to linger above another chute, one that Schaben said held cattle destined “for the slaughterhouse to be hamburger.”

Edwards has been in Iowa so many times and around so many farms that he seemed to know the difference. And in this, his second run through the Iowa caucuses, Edwards is determined that no other presidential candidate is going to leave him the political equivalent of hamburger.

Lately, the public face of the former North Carolina senator has been the battler taking the attack to Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in debates and speeches. But this recent visit to the livestock auction house is the less visible side of a candidate who thinks the rural vote could propel him to a surprise victory in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Edwards is badly outgunned here by Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

After a lengthy stay atop the state polls, he has fallen to a poor third place while Clinton and Obama fight for first. His plight is deepened by his inability to match either rival in spending. Obama has already lavished about $4 million on Iowa television ads and Clinton has laid out about $2 million, while Edwards, up to last week, had spent only $23,000 for one ad. And, unlike Clinton or Obama, nobody believes that Edwards could continue his presidential campaign unless he wins the Iowa caucuses.

“Edwards has to win Iowa,” said pollster John Zogby. “There is no tomorrow for him.”

But Edwards, who came from nowhere to finish a strong second behind John Kerry in the caucuses four years ago, thinks he can come from behind once again.

“I lived through this in 2003,” he said outside a school gym in tiny Exira when asked about being behind Clinton and Obama in the polls. “They said exactly the same thing about Howard Dean. But Howard Dean didn't win a primary, didn't win a caucus (even though) he had a huge lead. . . . I know the way this works. I've lived through it.”

Because of that experience, it is a different John Edwards presenting himself to Iowans this time. Gone is the relentlessly optimistic and sunny centrist who talked about “two Americas,” rarely got into specifics and abstained from attacking a fellow Democrat.

In his place is the new Edwards who has veered leftward, offers detailed policy statements and seems to relish leading an attack on Clinton.

“What's going to matter at the end is not this superficial polling stuff. What's going to matter is, what are your substantive ideas,” said Edwards, 54.

He added that Iowa Democrats will put emphasis on picking the candidate with the best chance of winning next November.

That explains much of what Edwards is doing lately – attacking Clinton, suggesting she is unelectable and parading a steady stream of public officials from Southern and border states to voice their wish that Edwards be at the top of the 2008 ticket.

It also explains why Edwards pounced when Clinton aides were quoted in The New York Times as stating that the senator was moving from “primary mode” to “general-election mode.” Edwards suggested to Iowans that Clinton is taking them for granted.

“How about 'tell-the-truth' mode?” he asked a farm group sitting on hay bales in a tool shed in Harlan. “We don't need the world's next great politician. We need somebody we can trust.”

The message was also hammered home less than an hour later when he stopped for lunch in Hamlin at Darrell's Place, winner of the Iowa Pork Producers “Tenderloin of the Year” in 2003.

“This is a good redneck place,” said Ben Jones, a former Georgia congressman best known as “Cooter” on “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show.

Jones was traveling the state with Edwards to emphasize the candidate's affinity for all things rural – and to not so subtly compare Clinton to the fictional “Boss Hogg” of the TV show. Throughout rural America, he insisted, Clinton's nomination would mean “collateral damage to all Democrats.”

With Edwards visiting small towns in Iowa that rarely see even statewide candidates, that message seemed to be taking hold.

“He doesn't act like he is above us,” said retired electrician Doug Wolkow, 69, at the cattle auction. “Hillary has good rhetoric, but Edwards, he's a rural person like us.”

Edwards' father worked in textile mills in small Southern towns, and his mother had a mail route and an antique store. Edwards, the product of state schools, worked on construction crews and swept mill floors during summers as a teenager.

In other places, Edwards, who rose from his humble beginnings to become a millionaire trial lawyer, may still get kidded for his expensive haircuts. But here, farmers like Merle Sass, 78, who lives in the Missouri Valley, see “a down-to-earth man.” After listening to him speak, Sass offered his support, saying, “There's nothing fancy about him.”

Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, who is running Edwards' Iowa campaign, said it is critical that he do well in these rural areas, noting that he is the only candidate to have campaigned in all 99 counties in the state. In contrast, Obama has been to fewer than 60 and Clinton fewer than 40.

“John Edwards is the only candidate who can go into the communities and know what it's like to live in a small town,” she said, adding that Edwards has staffers in all of the state's 1,784 precincts.

Dennis Goldford, an expert on the caucuses at Drake University in Des Moines, said up to half of all caucus attendees come from small towns and rural areas. “If he doesn't do well here, it won't be because of lack of organization or effort,” he said. “It will be because he simply can't emerge as the 'un-Hillary.' ”