Well, suppose you eliminate both the extramarital affair and the Obama candidacy, and get a straight HRC vs. Edwards contest? I don't think Edwards can succeed even then. He would get much (though not all) of Obama's OTL white support, and he would get *some* OTL 2008 HRC voters who were motivated mainly by opposition to Obama. OTOH he would get very little of Obama's African American support, which was basically pro-Obama rather than anti-Clinton. Also, economic populism, which was Edwards' big theme, would not be as strong a weapon as it would be for Sanders in 2016 in OTL, because at the time of the 2008 primaries the Great Recession, though it may have technically begun, had not yet hit full force. As for Iraq, Edwards had voted for the authorization for Bush to go to war, so it was hard for him to effectively attack HRC on that issue, despite his later change of heart--whereas Obama could point to his opposition to the war from the beginning.