As he sought the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2004 and later as John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards talked about poverty more than any other candidate.
But when he spoke on the campaign trail about what he referred to as the "two Americas," he told a conference on poverty here this week, "people called it a downer."
Now Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and a presumed contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, has made curbing poverty the centerpiece of his work and his political approach.
This is his true passion, he said in an interview, and he thinks that voters may be more responsive in the coming years, both because the middle class is becoming less secure and because of a shared sense of fairness.
Mr. Edwards was the organizer and the most assiduous note-taker at the poverty conference, sponsored by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, an organization that he founded and directs.
The meeting drew more than 200 scholars and leaders of private antipoverty agencies to discuss issues like the problems of the working poor and the effects globalization has on labor.
The challenge, Mr. Edwards and other speakers said, is not just to devise better ways to fight poverty but to find strategies with broad appeal.
Some of the scholars offered, if not cheerful data, themes that they said might grab the attention of middle-income Americans. Many of the same economic trends that hurt the poor, the experts said, are also creating "a harsh new world of economic insecurity for middle-class families," in the words of Jacob S. Hacker, a political scientist at Yale.
Mr. Hacker described a decline in shared safety nets, like health insurance, that leave more families confronting medical crises or job losses without assistance.
Rising costs for housing, health care and other necessities have affected middle-class families as well as the poor, said Elizabeth Warren, an expert on family bankruptcy and a law professor at Harvard. Even with more mothers now working outside the home, Ms. Warren said, families have more debt, fewer reserves and more volatile incomes than they did a few decades ago.
Several scholars lamented the racial and class disparities in family assets, including home equity and other savings, a topic that receives less attention than those disparities in income. Income is used to get by, they said, but assets provide a safety net and a means to climb ahead. Helping low-income people buy homes and using tax credits to encourage savings accounts were among the potential answers put forth.
In interviews, several scholars said they were grateful for the chance to discuss research and issues, though they said they knew that Mr. Edwards was most likely banking ideas for a political campaign.
