John Edwards has been out of the presidential contest for weeks but he’s now about to make it official.
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 but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned.
The two-time White House candidate notified a close circle of senior advisers that he planned to make the announcement at a 1 p.m. EST event in New Orleans that had been billed as a speech on poverty, according to two of his advisers. The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.
I haven’t seen polling crosstabs and am not really sure who this helps. My gut tells me that Edwards and Obama are both anti-Hillary candidates and that this should marginally help Obama. The alternative thesis, though, is that Edwards and Obama are the populist change-hope candidates while Hillary is the Establishment candidate, in which case this helps Clinton. [No, that would help Obama, too, wouldn’t it? Alex Knapp argues that Edwards is actually drawing mostly from Clinton, intuition notwithstanding.]
Either way, I continue to believe that Clinton surges to a commanding lead next Tuesday.
via Hot Air
