John Edwards

Today John Edwards admitted he had an affair in 2006 with 44-year old Rielle Hunter.

Some will judge him harshly for it, some will not. All I can say is Democrats sure got lucky by not choosing him as our nominee this year - because if we had, the campaign would be over and John McCain would be choosing his Oval Office furniture.

And hopefully Barack Obama isn't lying when he says Michelle keeps him in line.

But while everyone obsesses over Edwards' past affair, what about John McCain's past affair - his affair with Cindy Lou Hensley, the pretty young heiress of one of the largest Budweiser distributors?

99% reporting:

So what do you think? Will this give Obama a big enough boost to beat Clinton on Super Tuesday? Did Bill blow it for Hill? Did Edwards get enough votes to remain competitive?

Update 1: I like Jane Hamsher's take:

You would think that none of these people had ever been through an election before, with everyone reaching for the oxygen tanks over the "negative campaigning" in South Carolina. Hello, Lee Atwater? Anybody remember him? And Digby is right, all media concern trolls joining with right wing concern trolls about how Big Bad Bill is being mean to poor Barack only serves to infantalize Obama. Clinton has unfairly characterized many of Obama's positions but Obama has stood up to it well and fired back with gusto. Anyone who truly does care should be cheering him on for proving he is tough enough to take on the Republicans and get off the fainting couch, because most people over the age of 12 who aren't paid to punditize on teevee know that compared to what's coming this is pure little league.

Dispatch from New York City - 7:00P EST

2008 has just begun and the Media is already on a roll. They are all vying for the best why Hillary won New Hampshire theory. The prize here goes to the Chris Matthews Show and the Racist Theory to explain the lousy exit polls. Of course Chris Matthews has long been a critic of Senator Clinton and was writing her off after Iowa. On his Tuesday show Chris stated “This is the night the night that could be the end of a Presidential frontrunner’s candidacy”. Wishful thinking and as can be imagined Chris was not only stunned later that night but finally driven to madness. His show on Wednesday night was the most hilarious episode yet. Imagine grown educated men and one woman sitting around expounding the Racist Theory of Hillary’s win.

By Dave Lindorff

The real message of the Iowa caucus yesterday was that the long-operative Clintonian/Democratic Leadership Council assumption that the independent or unaffiliated voter bloc is composed of conservative-leaning, dim-witted and easily manipulated people has got it all wrong.

In fact, in Iowa, where unaffiliated voters are free to participate in either a Democratic or Republican caucus, 41 percent of those people voted not for the conservative, tough-talking “centrist” Hillary Clinton. They voted instead for the black, nominally anti-war candidate, Barack Obama. Another significant percentage of independents went for another progressive-sounding candidate, John Edwards. Clinton only got an embarrassing 17 percent of the unaffiliated vote.

` The implications of this failure on her part are enormous when it comes to next November’s general election.

Just yesterday I complained there was no substantive difference among the three Democratic frontrunners (Clinton, Edwards, Obama) on ending the U.S. occupation Iraq, since they all promised to keep significant forces in Iraq by the end of their first term in 2013.

But today John Edwards set a deadline of December 2009 for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops.

Edwards Calls for Quick End to Iraq Training Effort
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

SIOUX CITY, Iowa — John Edwards says that if elected president he would withdraw the American troops who are training the Iraqi army and police as part of a broader plan to remove virtually all American forces within 10 months.

In 2004, John Edwards won the endorsement of the Des Moines Register. But this time they picked Hillary Clinton because they were terrified by Edwards' challenge to Corporate Power. Edwards told George Stephanopoulos,

Today may be remembered as a pivotal day in dealing with the increasingly urgent problem of global warming.

In Valencia, Spain, the world's climate scientists are struggling to finalize a consensus report that the world's governments will sign.

"There is real urgency," said Bert Metz from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, who co-chaired the IPCC working group on options for mitigating climate change.

"We need to peak emissions within 10 years if we are to keep the global temperature rise to 2C. If we leave it for 25 years, we're already committed to 3C."

Handily, [this] IPCC summary also tells you what those temperature rises translate to in terms of impacts.

David Sirota and Jonathan Tasini both have blogs out this morning celebrating John Edwards' denunciation of corporate trade agreements and opposition to new ones. Both paint Edwards as a ferocious opponent of NAFTA. But neither of these bloggers mentions the fact that Edwards stood on stage in Soldier Field and joined every other candidate except Dennis Kucinich in affirming that he would NOT end NAFTA. He would try to "fix it." Now, you can try to make an argument for prefering Edwards to Kucinich, but you should do so honestly, not by celebrating Edwards' halfway stance on each issue while omitting Kucinich's principled stand shoulder to shoulder with us.

During the Democratic Presidential debate at Dartmouth College on 9/26/07, the candidates gave their timetables for getting all U.S. troops out of Iraq.

• Kucinich: 4/09
• Richardson: 1/10
• Dodd: 1/13
• Edwards: will keep 3,500 to 5,000 troops to protect the U.S. Embassy and humanitarian workers
• Obama: combat troops out by 5/10 but will keep troops to fight Al Qaeda and protect our embassy and civilians
• Clinton: will keep combat and Special Operations Forces to fight Al Qaeda
• Biden: keep troops only for peacekeeping

Please click the link for each candidate's contact page and copy/paste the letter below or write your own.