Talk Elections

Edwards performed best in the rural South, particularly the border states where there aren't as many black voters who would have tended to support Obama. He got a sizable chunk of the Oklahoma primary vote even though he'd been out of the race for a while.

A lot of those voters ultimately supported McCain in the fall and many haven't returned to the Democratic fold since then (certainly not in the mid-term elections, anyway).

Why would these "conservative Democrats" support John Edwards when he was arguably more liberal on economic issues than either Clinton or Obama? Or is this just evidence that they were all a bunch of racists who just wanted to be able to vote for a white guy with a Southern accent?

Bingo.

John Edwards is to the Democratic Party as what Ron Paul is to the Republican Party.

Candidate X understands people like me.

A lot of white Democrats in the South are poor. That's why Edwards, who ran an economically populist campaign ("two Americas"), did so well with them.

Wesley Clark was also popular with a lot of conservative southerners as well as people on Democratic Underground.

eh, not really. This analogy breaks down because Edwards doesn't have a cult following. It's more because he was the only Southern White male in the race, and Southern Conservadems wanted to vote for him because he looked and talked like them, regardless of what his actual views were.

He did, it just wasn't in the same demographics Ron Paul got.

Also, to a lesser extent, this happened with Hillary. She was arguably to the left of Obama on some issues, and yet the conservative Democratic establishment continued to support her over Obama.

Yes, but Hillary was a viable candidate. So why would the Edwards voters support someone who wasn't even in the race anymore instead of her?

Hillary also seemed to appeal more to the Northern/Appalachian blue-collar voters than to Southerners. Her working-class coalition was union members and coal miners and factory workers. Edwards' was Southern whites in right-to-work states, almost the Democratic counterpart to the kind of Republicans who supported Mike Huckabee.

I sometimes mix the two. Where I'm located, Appalachian and Southern are just about the same thing. I would disagree with you though on the characterization of Edwards and Hillary, at least relative to where they can perform well, as Edwards is an Appalachian child and Hillary is well-liked by Southerners. He's from Oconee County, SC, which is an Appalachian county and right on the NE border of Georgia. In the NE Georgia counties near there - which are heavily Appalachian - Edwards got 8-10% in the Democratic Primary on March 2, 2008. In the NW Georgia Appalachian counties, he got ~5%. In the NW GA Tennessee Valley counties, he barely broke 2-3% and Hillary was insanely popular here in 2008. Edwards didn't even break 1% in the vast remainder of Georgia. It would have been feasible for Hillary to crack 40% in North Georgia in 2008, which would have been remarkable considering the electorate.

Because he was white and charismatic.

Racism and sexism (whether of the conscious or unconscious variety) are the most obvious explanations. Probably many of the same kinds of voters who voted for Judd in West Virginia on Tuesday.

I think that a lot of people here forget that most voters don't vote on the basis of ideology like many of us here do; they don't know the differences in policy positions and even if they do, it's not the foremost factor in their vote as many voters lack a coherent ideology themselves. Not a criticism, just an observation.

You really don't need to resort to racism and sexism to understand this.  You really don't.  Edwards didn't do nearly as well in the South against Hillary and Obama as he did against Kerry and Dean. 
Even though McCain and Edwards were on the opposite sides of major issues, they both sought to appeal to populist and reformist impulses, so it's no surprise one would support one then the other. See also the appeal of Huckabee.

Because he can talk about the blue and red divide without offending white working-class agricultural farmers eventhough he is a trial lawyer and fancy hairdoes. He is one of them by talking about being from a textile mill worker family. He has a southern twang.

He had a Southern twang, and appeals to some working class conservative Democrats. But where were they for him in 04?

He ended up being a dud of a debator, with Cheney, and costing Kerry OH.  Which Gephardt or Mark Warner would have been happy to do a better job at being a running mate.

How would an Obama-Edwards ticket have done in 2008 (assuming no Rielle Hunter scandal and that John Edwards was never picked as John Kerry's running-mate in 2004)?

The other choices were a woman and a black guy. I'm serious BTW I had 2-3 older guys with Edwards signs tell me that. I'm not kidding.

He was a blue-collar Southerner who grew up poor.  Easy.

I thought only conservative white Republicans could be racist or sexist. ;)

Anyway, this statement is ludicrous.

I think it's fair to say racism and sexism played a part, however large or small, in Edwards' success, (Edwards getting over 7% in West Virginia long after he dropped out comes to mind) but it certainly wasn't all there was to it.

Edwards had a captivating message for Southern voters. He represented a kind of old school Southern populism.

meh, John Huntsman got 7% in DC long after he dropped out too.

From members of the DC press corps who never got over their crush for him.

Same reason Obama won with blacks, they feel he represents their interests better.