US:A cheer went up when Elizabeth Edwards walked into the library at Carroll High School and as she moved through the crowd she received as many hugs as handshakes.
To get to Carroll from almost anywhere, you drive along straight, empty roads flanked by flat, snow-covered fields that were swathed this week in freezing fog and dotted with treacherous patches of ice.
A couple of hundred people made it to the high school to hear Democratic candidate John Edwards make his pitch for their support at Thursday's caucus.
Many, however, were there because of Elizabeth, who encouraged her husband to continue his run for the White House despite hearing earlier this year that her breast cancer was incurable.
"You have in his case the most progressive candidate, the candidate who understands your life better than any other candidate because he came from your life," she said.
Edwards almost won Iowa in 2004 and he has maintained a serious presence in the state ever since, but most polls put him in third place, behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The Des Moines Register poll, generally seen as the most reliable, gives Obama a seven point lead over Clinton, with Edwards trailing just behind her. According to the poll, 40 per cent of likely voters in Thursday's Democratic caucus will be Independents, who are allowed to change their party affiliation on the night.
Obama's message of transcending divisions of party, race and class appeals more to Independents than to traditional Democrats, but Clinton has adopted much of the same rhetoric.
Alone among the mainstream Democratic candidates, Edwards promises confrontation with the "moneyed interests" he blames for the crisis in American health care and the growing economic insecurity among middle-income voters.
"Corporate greed is stealing your children's future. As sure as I'm standing here, every single day, they're keeping your children from having a chance, they're keeping the promise of America away from your children," he said.
Edwards's campaign is less well funded than Obama's or Clinton's, but the support of a number of big unions has helped him to reach Iowa's voters with his arguments against the corporate power he claims has taken control of the American political process.
"What these companies were allowed to do was to leave America, take their jobs, go somewhere else and hire people to do their work for 10 cents on the dollar - no labour standards, no environmental standards, nothing.
"They made more money. But at what cost? What did it do to working people?" he said.
A former trial lawyer who made millions by suing big corporations, Edwards has drawn fire on account of the profits he made from a hedge fund, the $400 he once paid for a haircut and the huge house he lives in.
In Carroll, however, he spoke of his childhood in North Carolina as the son of a mill worker who lost his job and later saw the mill closed.
Looking out over these rural Iowans, dressed in jeans, workshirts and heavy boots, he drew a contrast between his life experience and that of Obama and Clinton and said he knew better than any other candidate how it felt to struggle to make ends meet.
"This is very personal to me, very personal. Nobody has to explain this to me. I don't have to read it in a book," he said.
The conventional wisdom in American politics is that voters don't like angry candidates and that they like their politicians to be optimistic, with an upbeat message.
Edwards is banking, however, on tapping into a deep seam of discontent among millions of Americans who have seen their living standards fall even as they work longer hours and watch corporate profits soar.
In the final days of the campaign, he is challenging Obama's politics of hope, arguing that the Illinois senator is pushing hope too far when he thinks drug companies and insurance companies will cede power as a result of friendly dialogue.
"I'll tell you when they'll give their power away," Edwards said. "When we take it from them - and not before."
Edwards's best hope of winning in Iowa tomorrow lies in his support among trade unionists, who may be less shy about standing up in a caucus than less experienced campaigners and may be galvanised by his fighting talk.
"We have a big fight before us with these entrenched, moneyed interests," he said.
"And all I can say to you is, you'd better get somebody on Thursday night when you go to the caucus who's got what it takes for that fight. They'd better have some guts. They'd better have some determination."