the "winner." Or the person he believed would win. He pulled the trigger now because he can still get some credit for it.

But then I'm someone who admired Edwards' policies and rhetoric more than I admired Edwards. I never really bought his transformation from centrist democratic senator to man of the people. I don't dislike him, but as far as I'm concerned the best thing about Edwards was always his wife.

And the pony he rode in on.

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Well, some people are probably incorrectly but legitimately concerned that a long primary season equals less time to Define The Other Candidate, regardless of whom is running. A lot of this concern is disingenuous, but some of it is genuine. Perhaps Edwards falls into that camp.

at MSNBC, and Tweety is now all loving Edwards--ugh

Top story--not Hillary's giant win.

Obama always distracts after a loss--this is it for WVa.

it's not related to this post

but

jeralyn merritt at TALK LEFT has a very important post up entitled

"another electibility argument regarding caucuses"

with regard to those fabulous caucus majorities obama rolled up,

merritt's post discusses the importance of taking into account the votes of the elderly, especially elderly women, in assessing whether obama should get the demo nomination.

to kill Clinton's news cycle.

I wonder if Elizabeth will endorse? It's pretty clear that Obama isn't getting hers right now.

edward's endorsement today was hurriedly arranged, and, i would guess, was intended to redirect the evening news shows away from discussions of senator clinton's big win in west virginia and of obama's weakness among working class voters.

Seriously? How? Even his demeanor towards the working class betrays that.

God, please have Elizabeth endorse Clinton or, at the very least, stress that she's not endorsing Obama.

I thought it was funny how many news accounts had that in it.

my theory...

If Obama is so damaged by the time the Convention comes around that SDs are going to nominate Clinton instead, Obama will step aside and throw his support (and his campaign organization) to Edwards.

she just said--and precisely to kill the pro-Hillary news.

He doesn't win Democrats Obama needs, and the media mocking and utter dismissal of him ensures he won't help win non-Dems either, i think.

it's funny--on the one hand, Obama pretended WVa didn't happen until now, and now Edwards proves how devastating it really was and they knew it.

they just said--Elizabeth is explicitly not part of endorsement and not traveling to appear with Obama--that's good at least.

Now Obama can declare victory once again and then Edwards can sign up to run as his VP. That way Barry can take the summer off to go wind-surfing while the RNC sharpens up their buzzsaw.

Isn't it nice how all the other Dems jump in to help Barry every time that girl gives him a thrashing? Poor baby.

Kennedy, Kerry, Richardson, Dodd, Leahy, McGovern, and now Edwards - all "Losers" for Obama.

Stuck pigs squeal. For a guy who didn't think WVA mattered, he's sure trying to cover over the results.

wanna add this to your post? it's the NYMag "obama blew it" story-- http://nymag.com/news/politics/powergrid...

or whatever cabinet post he wants.

But why not promise univeral health care?

Edwards is dead to me now.

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“We must separate loyal party members from counter-revolutionaries. The first shall inherit our glorious future. The second must be purged from us and history” -Mao Zedong

Is that under that scenario, Elizabeth would be backing Obama, too. And I know she's hinted earlier that she preferred Clinton, but since when does consistency have anything to do with politics. If anything, Edwards is setting himself up for access to Obama's money machine. That could be helpful in 2012 or even 2016. And it's always better to endorse a winner, especially at a moment when he needs you.

I agree that Obama is not prepared for a long fight or the potential of a humiliating defeat, but I also think that even for a politician he has an enormous ego. One that may not permit him to envision a humiliatiing loss.

so the report of the endorsement opened the news, but apparently the timing wasn't right to get Edwards' speech leading the news.

Heh.

seriously old politics--

and Obama's in a packed stadium which they said they wouldn't do anymore.

I want to express my joy at this wonderful news.

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“A true friend stabs you from the front” -Oscar Wilde

Truly. Edwards endorsement is as meaningless as all the others, except this one appears to have been quickly arranged by the Obama camp. While I don't know what it was, clearly they did something to move Edwards today. But why did they need to? What is it they're hearing from SDs? For a guy who has this whole thing sown up, he seems to be moving as fast as he can to paper over the rough spots. And if the GE were his only concern, he wouldn't be flailing around like this.

The other good thing is that given the last minute arrangements, I'd say Obama needed Edwards because he's out of any other big news. While I never believed there was some huge SD block just waiting to join the O-bandwagon, this cinches it. Because Edwards is nice, but a lot of SDs would be nicer.

That said, I just recently posted that it wouldn't effect me or my thoughts about Edwards if he were to endorse Obama now that North Carolina had voted.
Edwards did not try to sway the outcome of this election with his endorsement, and that is a credit to him.

they keep doing all these media-tailored and purely visual and symbolic things but never the tangible and practical things and issues these voters want dealt with.

This was definately done to change the news cycle. I'd be suprised if all the SDs don't start to suddenly flow to Obama. It looks pretty bad when the supposed nominee gets his ass kicked royally. I think they'll largely come out before Kentucky gets to vote. To me, it makes him look weak for the party to have to protect him from further drubbings, but I can understand why my ex-party would do it. My ex-party. 36 years...

As one of the four founders of Corrente, I am embarrassed by this comment thread as it is developing.

You guys want "fuck you" language, well, now you got it, and from me, the sane one, the old-fashioned liberal who voted for Obama but refused to join with those Obama enthusiasts who seemed to want to crush the critique going on here at Corrente, despite the sometimes disparaging words for this blog I have found myself running into on other blogs, ones for which I have real respect.

The reason I held out is that for the most part, the critique being carried on here, and a concomitant defense of the Clinton campaign against the incessant attacks from both the press, the Obama campaign and the OFB was well founded and well argued, and happening at very few other places.

Corrente was informally an Edwards blog. But
it didn't take any of you more than a minute to start to maintain various versions of "he's dead to us now." Some respect for those of us who bring you this blog might have suggested that you take it just a little bit easy.

Don't you people get it? You are doing exactly what you continually complain about the Obama Fan Base doing. What many of them did to Krugman, for instance, the minute he said something mildly critical of a specific Obama position, and mildly supportive of a Clinton one.

I understand your disappointment. Despite the fact that I voted for Obama, I don't share the same deep fears about an Obama presidency that some of my colleagues do, but I am sufficiently fond and respectful of both Clintons to feel how much this must hurt.

I do not include Lambert in this condemnation; he reported an important development and asked for a discussion, exactly as he should have. I was in the process of doing the same thing before I noticed that he'd already got it up. I was going to add a caution that commentators try and deal with their understandable disappointment in ways other than attacking Edwards, until they'd given at least some thought to where we are in this campaign.

It is as ridiculous to call John Edwards a panda bear considering the issues he chose to run on, and the populist approach he took, as it was and continues to be to call Bill Clinton a pander bear, who ran in 1992 on a promise to raise the taxes of top income earners, and was unafraid to make a frontal attack on Reaganomics, and not just because it was a failed economic theory, but because it promoted an economic policy that was fundamentally unjust. That's running as a liberal.

This is a potentially important turn in the campaign. But an even more important turn has been taking place under your noses and you don't seem to have noticed it. Hillary Clinton is making a graceful attempt to wind down her campaign, while not giving up, and by making sure that she remains a viable candidate, right through to last primary. There are all sorts of signals the campaign is giving out that this is what is happening. And frankly, some of you are as oblivious to it as the fucking SCLM, who have to ignore those signals in order to continue to keep writing their dime-store narratives about the Clintons.

I have deliberately not aimed this at any particular commentator. Because I like and admire all of you. Even when I disagree with you. All of you have helped to make this blog a force in the blogisphere. There have been costs associated with that, but I still feel proud of what Corrente has been about through-out this campaign season.

But an insularity has begun to creep in, at a time when it's as clear as dust on a piano that we need to think about the fact that we're entering a transitional phase as surely as the Clinton campaign is. I'm not proclaiming that her candidacy is dead. Her candidacy has always been about more than her winning the nomination. I'm not even pronouncing her chances of achieving the nomination over. They are importantly damaged, however, even after W. Virginia.

I can't tell you how disappointed I've been that there has been so little productive discussion here about Hillary as Vice-President.

Perhaps I shouldn't have started this discussion with a comment instead of a post; I will be posting more on the Edwards endorsement and its multiple meanings, so perhaps I should just leave it here.