Why did conservative white Democrats like John Edwards so much in '08?

[Indy Texas]

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?

[Indy Texas]

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.

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.