I think Josh has it right, Bonior sounded very raw. He probably put in (and watched others put in) 20-hour days for more than a year in hopes of landing Edwards the nomination, only to learn after the fact that he completely wasted his time. I’m still irritated about the money I wasted on that campaign, and it gets worse every time one of my friends asks me if I’ve written Edwards to demand a refund (I haven’t). But I’m fortunate to have enough money to do the things I need and want to do. What I don’t have is time, and that’s what Edwards’ campaign workers have lost. I can see why they’re even more pissed off than I am. Can’t buy time.

Report: Edwards admits to extramarital affair – CNN (8/8/08):

Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted Friday to an extramarital affair. He denied being the father of the woman’s child, as had been alleged in tabloid reports.

“In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs,” he said in a written statement. “I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness.”

It’s really unbelievable that Edwards ran for President with this hanging over his head. This is massively irritating as I was an early and often financial supporter of Edwards’ campaign. I guess we can all take a deep breath and count ourselves lucky that he didn’t win. Because, you know, having a Presidential candidate who cheated on his wife is untenable, right John McCain?

This does however put Jamie Beth on the hook for the $100 we bet on the Dem VP nomination.

By Julianna Goldman

May 14 (Bloomberg) — John Edwards, whose own bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination ended in January, will throw
his support behind former rival Barack Obama, the Illinois
senator’s campaign announced.

Edwards is scheduled to endorse Obama at a rally in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, this evening.

Edwards, 54, quit the race Jan. 30 after failing to score a
victory in the first four nominating contests. He remained on
the sidelines as both Hillary Clinton and Obama sought his
backing.

A former trial lawyer, North Carolina senator and the 2004
Democratic vice presidential nominee, Edwards ran with strong
backing from organized labor groups. Still, he was unable to
match Clinton and Obama in fundraising and media attention.

Not surprising, still shitty:

DENVER (AP) — Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters’ sympathies, The Associated Press has learned.

Obviously I have extensive thoughts about this. And with the “luxury” of two very long flights ahead of me, I’ll actually be able to write them down.

And in case there was any doubt, I’ll now be casting my ballot for Hillary on Tuesday. That’s two primary seasons in a row where my candidate didn’t make it to California.

(As an afterthought, if Edwards had received any coverage like the line quoted above when he was in the race, he wouldn’t be dropping out today.)

I want to join Sen. Clinton and President Clinton in congratulating Sen. Obama.

Now the three of us move on to February 5th where millions of Americans will cast their vote and help shape the future of this party and help shape the future of America.

He didn’t just sneak in President Clinton, these were practically his opening words (right after “Thank you all very much.”) Or, actually, not his words at all. Edwards was performing to Obama’s script.

On January 16, at the Henderson Convention Center in Nevada, Obama went:

I respect that Sen. Clinton and President Clinton tried to get health care fixed in 1993.

On January 21, on Good Morning America, it was:

We’ve got a formidable opponent – actually two formidable opponents at this point, between Sen. Clinton and President Clinton.

On January 22, during a media conference call before a speech in Greenville, South Carolina:

I think its very clear that Sen. Clinton and President Clinton have been spending the last month attacking me in ways that are not accurate.

On January 23, in an interview:

We’ve taken a lot of incoming over the last month from both Sen. Clinton and President Clinton and their camp. I know that’s certainly typical of Washington politics, and I think part of their strategy has been to drag us into the muck.

Repeat anything enough times, and it certainly gets noticed:

Obama often mentions “Sen. Clinton and President Clinton” in the same breath and in a pejorative way suggesting they are running as a tandem team against him.

Pretty widely, actually. And now Edwards wants to stand up and be noticed too. As being with Obama on this one. Hmmmm!

Edwards will win Iowa by 4-5 points. The media will then act like it was a forgone conclusion citing the false fact that he spent the whole last 4 years there.

I wanted to post this now, so that if it does indeed come to pass, we can all rise to our feet and give him a round of applause.

I’m worried because there’s only one scenario under which I see one of the Republican candidates-from-hell sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2009. And that scenario is that Obama wins the Democratic nomination, and then in November 2008 too many Americans vote the racism that I very much fear still bubbles just under the skin in large swathes of the country, the racism that these voters will never admit to a pollster in any way, shape or form.

If someone could design a reliable survey to get deviously at racism that might exist but would never be admitted directly or be tricked out even by simple indirect questions, I would very much like to see the results. And if they showed that I am totally off the mark in my fears, I would certainly stop worrying about Obama winning the nomination, and sit back and say: “Let the best person win”. But until someone can convince me that my fears are unfounded, I’m going to be worrying my head off at what I consider the very real prospect of the presidency staying in Republican hands. Even more dangerous hands than those of George Bush. How cruel would it be of the political gods if this is what they have decided will be the last component of Bush’s worst-of-all-time-so-far legacy? That he so polluted our body politic that he left the country only with Republican choices who were so much worse even than himself.

For the record, TNR’s Noam Scheiber sees two paths to an Obama nomination. One, Obama wins Iowa convincingly (by five points or more), in which case Edwards is done, and Obama consolidates the anti-Clinton votes and goes on to beat Clinton. Two, the Iowa caucus results in an inconclusive muddle:

An inconclusive muddle actually benefits Obama. The reason is that a muddle kills Edwards, who needs the kind of fundraising and free-media boomlet that only a clean victory can provide. And without Edwards in the race, Obama consolidates the anti-Hillary vote, which nudges him over the top in what’s now a dead-even race in New Hampshire, makes things look pretty good for him in South Carolina (where he’s been closing but still has to convince some African-Americans he can win), and generally gives him the upper hand for the nomination.

According to Scheiber’s analysis, if I don’t want to see an Obama nomination, I need to hope for “Hillary wins by more than a point or two, in which case the race is basically over”, or “Edwards wins convincingly and Obama is third, in which case Obama is probably done and Hillary and Edwards duke it out”.

For the next few days, all the goddesses and saints who listen to me on a regular basis are going to be at the receiving end of a lot of beseeching on behalf of the second scenario, and failing that, the first.

“The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.”

I’m genuinely proud of Obama for this, I just wish he’d act like this on policy.

For the record, John Edwards didn’t wear a flag pin when I met him last month.

WHO DOESN’T WANT TO WEAR THE RIBBON?

As the 2008 Democratic field started taking shape in the days after the 2006 election, I was most focused on Al Gore running and John Kerry not running. Kerry still hadn’t properly answered for the utterly pathetic campaign he ran in 2004, but was making noise about a run on the strength of his email list he misused two years earlier. He wisely decided to re-focus his attention on being a better Senator. Coming off a smash documentary and book, Gore seemed like the ideal candidate. But as I thought more about it, it seemed that he could better serve the country advancing awareness, acceptance and action on global warming rather than reliving the 2000 election.

I had also been keeping an eye on John Edwards, but more as a curiosity. Here was a man who ran a shiny happy campaign with a nice message in a year that required something much different. But clearly something happened to Edwards in the intervening years, something that closely tracks my own political and idealistic evolution during the Bush era. I don’t mind that Edwards started off as a moderate Third Way Democrat because that’s where I was at the time. I don’t hold his 2002 AUMF vote against him because for a few days after foolishly reading Kenneth Pollack‘s Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq I had visions of Saudi oil fields engulfed in an inferno and the ensuing economic apocalypse. I don’t even mind that he insisted on taking the non-confrontational high road in 2004 because there was still a chance that this country would wake up and make Bush the one-term punchline he deserved to be. But when Bushism was ratified by a couple of percentage points and then accelerated based on phantom “political capital,” everything changed for John Edwards, and for me as well.

So when it became an open secret that Edwards was going to run on a true populist platform and that his announcement was going to take place in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, I realized that I’d better start paying attention to him, and quickly. And it was the urgency with which he spoke that day in New Orleans that closed the deal. Suddenly the Op Ed he had written a year earlier was in context; it was time to lay it all on the line because things were only going to get worse until someone stepped up to directly challenge the people whose mission is apparently to ruin America from within. The issues he highlighted and the frank language he used communicated to me that not only did he share my priorities, he matched my intensity.

I watched as many interested Democrats decided to stay neutral in the primary for reasons that probably make sense for them. No one wants to back a loser, no one wants to be denied access based on support for an opposing candidate, and no one wants to open themselves up to accusations of bias as they cover the campaign. I briefly considered that position until I realized that I don’t care about access, would rather be up front about disclosure, and place more importance on the messenger and his message than popularity contest polls. In short, Edwards was my candidate from the beginning. I knew it was the right call when writing about his campaign here just seemed redundant; his speeches and policy proposals — from ending the Iraq war to calling bullshit on TWAT to universal healthcare to confronting the President to raising the minimum wage and more — were all in line with what we were already writing. What was the point of sticking in lines about how “John Edwards agrees”?

It was a difficult spring when the media decided to declare war on Edwards, and his campaign didn’t make it any easier when they fed raw meat in the form of gaffes to the high school girls of the press corps. But none of that changed the underlying equation, that Edwards was where I was where it counted. And with lines like this…

“No more pontificating, no more vacillating, no more triangulating, no more broken promises, no more pats on the head, no more ‘We’ll get around to it next time,’ no more taking half a loaf, no more tomorrow.”

…to the Take Back America conference and other venues, I never had to look back. This is someone who understands what I’ve been saying all along about Barack Obama, a man who, despite being on the campaign trail for eight months and in the national spotlight for three years, still hasn’t explained what his “half a loaf” style is supposed to accomplish. Maybe in 2000 something like this would have worked, but not today, and not until the damage of the last six years is repaired. It’s time to fight for what’s right first, and I’m not getting that from the frontrunners.

There’s a very strange dynamic at work in the Democratic primary, one where the third place candidate is driving the debate. On each of the President’s last two Iraq war spending requests, Edwards was far ahead of Obama and Clinton in calling for no funding without timelines. Clinton’s healthcare plan followed Edwards’ by several months, yet is nearly indistinguishable. While the leaders are busy trying to play it safe and cultivate their media constituencies, it’s Edwards who is actually leading. And this is why he has my full support, financial and otherwise.

John Edwards was in San Francisco this past weekend for a fundraiser, and as a big donor, I was able to go and meet him and hear his stump speech in person. What I saw there was a man who is passionate about his issues in a way that can only come from being around long enough to see what doesn’t work. In a room full of CEOs, lawyers, bankers, and society-types, Edwards didn’t hesitate before telling them that he would be fighting tooth and nail for an increase in the minimum wage, taking on insurance companies over health coverage, and dislocating the perverse fusion of big money interests and legislative favors. I also saw a human being who has no problem laughing at himself. When Edwards asked a questioner where he got his tie and the man said he’d only tell if Edwards told him where he got his haircut, the result was a full-on belly laugh. Most importantly, I saw a man who wants to be President very badly, but one I’d wager would trade that for implementation of his agenda. This stands in stark contrast to Obama’s cult of personality and Hillary’s calculated corporate centrism.

I’d love to see a two-person race between Edwards and Chris Dodd, but you go to the primaries with the top-tier candidates you have, not the ones you wish you had. And out of the top three, only Edwards is running as a proud Democrat. Even if all else were equal, shouldn’t this be enough in a Democratic primary?

More photos are up at Flickr.

Transcript:

This week – as we will forever – we remember those lost on September 11th. And this week, Washington refocuses on Iraq. But the question of Iraq is separate from September 11th – as it has always been, whatever George Bush would have us believe.
Likewise, supporting our troops and pursuing a failed war are not the same things – whatever George Bush would have us believe.

All Americans honor the incredible sacrifice of our troops. They have done everything asked of them with courage and resolve. Now we should bring them home.

They are policing a civil war, and the only way to end that civil war is for both sides, Sunni and Shia, to take responsibility to end it by agreeing to a political solution. And the only way to force them to take responsibility is to withdraw our troops – starting now.

Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he has ever had – more time, more troops, and more war.

In January, after years of evidence that military actions cannot force a political solution, the president announced a military surge to force a political solution. In May, he vetoed a plan to end the war, demanded more time to show the surge could work, and Congress gave it to him. Now, after General Petraeus reports the surge has produced no progress toward a political solution, what does the president want? More time for the surge to work, when we know it won’t.

Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home.

But Congress must answer to the American people. Tell Congress you know the truth – they have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice: a firm timeline for withdrawal.

No timeline, no funding. No excuses.

It is time to end this war.

It’s also time to get behind a candidate who wants to do more than play word games. Edwards and Dodd are leading. Obama and Clinton are more concerned with looking moderate. There is no compromise to be had on the war, no middle ground to occupy.