Sen. John Edwards set to quit Presidential Run (Breaking News)

HOOO!!!!

hum....

 

I think it depends on who let him be the VP

 

It's smart of him not to endorse anyone as long as there is no clear front runner. If it becomes a brokered convention, he will be the man with the power.

 

I don't know that he helped break up the white votes as much as conventional wisdom suggests. It may be that the white people voting for him would pick Obama second - ie, they are anti-Hillary votes.

That said, his votes need to massively shift to Obama. If they don't, Obama is in trouble. He really does need to endorse Obama, or I think this may very well hurt him. Part of the beauty of a 3-way race was that it prevented Hillary from ever getting to 50%, dragging the race out. Without that, someone's going to hit 50% in every state. That means this race could be over much more quickly, which favors Hillary I think.

 

He was my favorite candidate, even though I realized he wasn't likely going to be the nominee. I think the power of his campaign was the effect it had in pulling the other candidates' positions toward his.

I've been duped by politicians before, but I think Edwards is sincere. I hope Obama is. I'm nearly positive Hillary is not.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out...but my measure on it is that Edwards leaving the race helps Obama, as they seemed to mirror one another at times...and the view from 30,000 feet has them looking like change agents together with Hillary as a piece of the status quo.

 

^^^ Yep!

You think he'll do it before Tuesday Major?

 

I really, really hope so. At first (after Iowa/NH), it seemed he clearly would. But more recently, he's gone hard at both candidates, so I don't know what the deal is with him. I guess it all depends on his motivations. I did read this recently. I don't know enough about the delegate breakdown to know it's validity, but it's a concern:

Wow. This is a huge blow to Obama.

It's not a question of how Edwards' voters will split - they're likely to back Obama by at least a small margin. The real blow comes in all of the CDs that Hillary will win on February 5. Edwards drew almost no votes in heavily black areas, meaning that he didn't pull delegates from the CDs where Obama runs most strongly. But he was often cracking 15% in lily-white, relatively poor districts, and every time he did, he effectively pulled one delegate away from Hillary. Translated to a national scale, it probably meant 50-100 fewer Super Tuesday delegates for the Clinton campaign, but perhaps a dozen fewer for Obama.

There was talk a few days ago that Obama could virtually tie Hillary in delegates from NY despite losing the popular vote badly because of this weird math. In a district with a 50-35-15 vote and 5 delegates, the split would have been 2-2-1 (Clinton/Obama/Edwards). In a 55-45 split (say 2/3rd of the Edwards people go to Obama), Hillary wins the delegates 3-2. That NY dream is probably out the window.

 

He won't endorse Hillary so it's a matter of whether he will endorse Obama before Super Tuesday or not. He may want to hedge his bets and not endorse Obama until after Super Tuesday, just to make sure his bridges with Hillary aren't completely burnt in case she wins big and becomes the clear front-runner. He's got a long political future ahead of him and it would be risky if he stuck his neck out too soon. He's only 55.

 

I don't know about the broader implications, but I was an Edwards supporter who will now vote for Obama in the Maryland primary.

 

If he endorses Hillary he's a total sellout. She's exactly what he's been railing against in his campaign. Hopefully he endorses Obama quickly. Do the right thing, John!

 

He's going to support the greatest Black Man ever to run for President.

Spoiler

 

Texas is his firewall!

http://www.alankeyes.com/articles/080122texas.php

Alan Keyes launches Texas swing
January 22, 2008

On Tuesday, presidential candidate Alan Keyes began a six-week grassroots tour of Texas, originally his home state. Keyes is a 1968 graduate of Cole High School in San Antonio.

Although Keyes will make excursions outside Texas as needed, and will continue his nationwide radio blitz to counter the media's virtual blackout of his campaign, he plans to camp out in Texas until its primary on March 4. As most pundits agree, if Super Tuesday fails to produce a "presumptive" Republican nominee, Texas becomes all the more important as the last big prize of the primaries.

For all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the Keyes campaign has moved to Texas.

The latest schedule of Keyes' events this week in Texas lines up as follows — the biggest being a major rally at Knights of Columbus Hall, 6909 Camp Bullis Road in San Antonio, Thursday evening:

 

I agree. I'd be shocked if he supported Hillary after he's called her out over and over again in the debates.

 

Obama has to pick up both Edwards and Richardson!

Let's GO guys!

 

If you're an Obama supporter, this is the trend that gives you hope and also has to continue. Each of the last 5 days, Obama has made up one point. That has to continue, along with needing a multi-point jump from Edwards dropping out.



http://www.gallup.com/poll/104017/Gallup-Daily-Where-Election-Stands.aspx

 

I think there's some serious wishful thinking going on here. Even if Edwards comes out and endorses Obama, it's hard for me to imagine this having all that positive of an impact on him. It's easy to see this having a very negative impact. As has already been said, Edwards had no strength whatsoever in districts where Obama is solid. Edwards' base, demographically, is Clinton's base. Yes, I'm sure there's some anti-Hillary sentiment in there which will go to Obama, but laws of probability say that Clinton picks up the majority.

 

[rumor alert] via TPM --An Edwards adviser confirms to me that John Edwards won't be making any endorsement "for the moment."

However, this source refused to rule out the possibility of an endorsement before Feb. 5th, which is six days away.

 

But the demographics ignore some important things - specifically that Hillary wasn't getting 50% of the white vote. It may very well be that 50% of white people like Hillary and Obama/Edwards were simply splitting the rest.

It's worth noting that entrance/exit polls in Iowa and South Carolina suggested that most Edwards voters picked Obama 2nd according to MSNBC. I don't know the details, though. Ordinarily, these kinds of elections with an "establishment" candidate are a referendum on them - that is, people are either pro- or anti-Hillary, and then the anti- people decide on the other candidate second. Whether that's true in this scenario is unknown at this point.

I'd bet that more than half of Edwards voters will go to Obama. The question is whether this net helps Obama more or if it was better to keep it a 3-way race and have Edwards collecting delegates.