Where are the 2008 dark horses? (hint: look South)

We're now officially in the homestretch for the 2008 presidential races, last week marking the one-year mark until Election Day.

The Clinton/Obama/Romney/Giuliani/Thompson juggernauts are wrapping up endorsements, donors and media time -- and if there's a dark horse candidate out there, now might be a good time to come out of a slow trot and start galloping into the primaries.

So where are the dark horses, and how could they break through? Our friend David Sirota looks to Iowa and sees potential in two candidates who are talking the language of Huey Long populism -- former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former North Carolina senator John Edwards:

Huckabee gained 11 points in the latest University of Iowa survey, pulling himself into a statistical tie for second place with Giuliani, despite Giuliani's national fame and huge fundraising totals. Similarly, Edwards remains within striking distance of first place in Iowa despite his rivals spending 300 times what he's spent on television ads as of the end of September (Edwards launched his first ad last week).

What explains the unlikely rise of these two dark horses? It's the populism, stupid.

For evidence, Sirota points to the stump speeches and platforms of both candidates. First Huckabee:

"The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we're not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas, jobs that are lost by American workers, many in their 50s who, for 20 and 30 years, have worked to make a company rich and then watch as a CEO takes a $100 million bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else," Huckabee said at a recent Republican debate. "That's criminal - it's wrong."

And then there's Edwards, who, Sirota notes, "presents arguably the boldest challenge to the political Establishment of any major presidential candidate in contemporary history":

Proposing sweeping health care, tax, trade and labor law reform, he says the only way "people who are powerful in Washington" are "going to give away their power is if we take it away from them." The system, he says, is "controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water."

Sirota leaves out another GOP candidate who's making waves campaining on another hot issue -- Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Iraq. Paul shocked the establishment last month with the announcement that his renegade libertarian campaign had landed $5 million in third-quarter contributions -- about the same as (and in some cases, more than) his marquee rivals.

All seem like long shots for the nomination -- but all are already helping set the terms for the debate, one of the reasons for a long-shot campaign.

And one common denominator of all the 2008 dark horses? They all come from the South.