Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Former Senator John Edwards Drops Presidential Bid

MSNBC reported this morning that former North Carolina Senator John Edwards has dropped his bid for the White House. Edwards was not gaining much traction as the media was making this a two person race between Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York.
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.
Yahoo, via the AP, has more.
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.

Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer that she thought she had beaten had returned, but they would continue the campaign.
This isn't surprising although I had hoped it would wait it out and decide after Super Tuesday.

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