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CHARLESTON, S.C. Forget television ads, MySpace pages, polling, pundits and who had the better zinger at Monday's debate.

Should Edwards drop out if he doesn't win in S.C.? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

The trenches of the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary are union halls, greasy spoons, school gymnasiums, phone banks and doorsteps where supporters try to win over undecided voters, sometimes one at a time.

The foot soldiers on the ground are mainly volunteers, many of them arriving from out of state.

That describes supporters of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards who are working in advance of Saturday's primary.

Despite a disappointing finish in Nevada, where he garnered 4 percent of the vote, and polling that shows Edwards trailing Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois here, these ground troops believe Edwards can and should be the Democratic nominee.

Of course, high hopes for Edwards are paired with pragmatic lessons from the campaign trail.

"I've learned down here you just throw schedules out the window," Cameron Allison said Wednesday as he handed out stickers and signed in visitors to the break room of the longshoreman's union hall in Charleston.

Allison, 23, of Greensboro, with about 50 longshoremen, steelworkers and undecided voters, was waiting for Danny Glover, the Hollywood actor and activist, to give what turned out to be a 17-minute stump speech on behalf of Edwards. Scheduled

to begin at 10:30 a.m., Glover was running late.

Allison, who attended Southeast Guilford High School, graduated from Greensboro College in December. He took two weeks off from looking for a job to campaign for Edwards in South Carolina and will head back north on Sunday.

"The thing that really keeps me going is that he (Edwards) does have the best policies of any of the candidates," said Allison, letting his political science degree show through. He pointed to Edwards' vow not to take money from corporate lobbyists, saying, "I believe that John Edwards will be able to keep his promises."

Allison is in the state to win over voters like Bob Thompson, 64, a retired police officer from Atlanta who stopped by the union hall to hear Glover.

"On Saturday, I'm going to punch the button for somebody," Thompson said, unsure of who that might be. Edwards, Obama and Clinton are strong contenders, he said, although Edwards does not have as many backers in Thompson's personal circle of friends.

As time wears away, Thompson said he's tired of waiting for Glover and is going to go down the street to where Bill Clinton is speaking on behalf of his wife. He misses the actor by three minutes.

"He (Edwards) is going to talk about the real issues over poverty," Glover said as he paced inside a circle of supporters, onlookers and a couple of television cameras, extolling Edwards as a friend of labor.

After Glover speaks, Peggy Durfey raises her voice above the din of discussion and well-wishing to call out for anyone who would volunteer on the campaign this week.

"We need every one of you," said the U.S. Airways customer service agent from Boulder City, Nev., just outside Las Vegas. She was sporting a blue and yellow "Steelworkers for Edwards" shirt and leaving the union hall to knock on doors for Edwards.

"He'll pick up people who would never vote for Hillary (Clinton) or Obama," Durfey said. She said that the campaigns for the two front-runners used less-than-savory tactics in her precinct to win support from Edwards supporters. After that, Durfey said, she felt an obligation to try to help Edwards pick up South Carolina.

"We have to get him to the national convention," she said. "We can't let the media eliminate him. They just want this to be a two-person race, and it's not."

Indeed, Edwards has told supporters, reporters and anyone else who will listen that he is in the race until the end. As Glover spoke in Charleston, Edwards himself was on a campaign swing through the northwestern section of the state, dinging Clinton for not spending enough time in South Carolina and Republican John McCain for saying the economy was doing fine in the wake of bad unemployment news and stock market reports.

Volunteers at Edwards' field office in Columbia can echo many of their candidate's lines from the campaign stump, and many say they believe their candidate can best whoever the Republicans put up in the general election.

The Columbia field office is on the first floor of a sprawling, converted residence, the top floor of which is a real estate office. Downstairs, folding chairs and tables furnish wide-open rooms where volunteers make phone calls to supporters or pick up maps and literature used to canvass houses. In one corner of the front room, a printer sits atop two boxes of paper, while handwritten signs give directions on where to sign up, suggestions about things one can do to help the campaign and count down until South Carolina's primary day.

The crowd is mostly young, in their 20s, but there were a smattering of people there Wednesday evening with salt-and-pepper hair.

"Edwards is the one who can carry the South," said David Wright, 34, as he squeezed his heavyset, more-than-6-foot frame into a borrowed car of another campaign volunteer. He was heading out to pick out two other volunteers who had been canvassing a neighborhood.

Wright, a history teacher, flew into Columbia from Hawaii earlier this week, spending 34 hours in transit just to get to South Carolina to man phone banks and canvass voters door-to-door.

"If we elect Obama, or we elect Clinton, we're not going to grow as a party," Wright said, worrying that Obama wasn't tough enough to win the general election and expressing disenchantment with Clinton.

When asked who he would vote for if Edwards is not the Democratic nominee and if he would back a Republican, Wright responds quickly.

"Shoot," he exclaims in a drawl that tells of his Alabama upbringing. "I'd vote for a purple-spotted ape before I'd vote Republican."

He then considers his options a minute and then reflects, "I'll do what John (Edwards) says to do."

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker @news-record.com