Ex-White House candidate Edwards to endorse Obama: campaign
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Former Democratic White House candidate John Edwards will formally endorse party front-runner Barack Obama on Wednesday, an Obama campaign source told AFP.
The move by the 2004 vice presidential nominee will come as a further blow to Obama's beleaguered foe Hillary Clinton, who is vowing to stay in the race until it ends in June, despite Obama's overwhelming mathematical advantage.
The endorsement by Edwards may be valuable to Obama, as the base of his support before leaving the campaign in January was with white, working class voters -- exactly the sector of the electorate Obama has trouble attracting.
That deficit was on display on Tuesday, when Obama went down to a crushing defeat in the West Virginia primary to Clinton, despite his wide mathematical advantage in the overall Democratic White House race.
Edwards, formerly a North Carolina senator, who had agonized for months over whether to endorse either Clinton or Obama, has launched a nationwide crusade to cut poverty.
He said in an interview posted on People magazine's website this month that both he and his wife, Elizabeth, who is battling incurable cancer, saw pluses and minuses with both candidates.
He said he would like to see more substance behind the Illinois senator's soaring rhetoric, and was impressed with Clinton's toughness, though did not like some of the hardball politics behind her campaign.
The smooth-talking Edwards, a multi-millionaire former trial lawyer, was fuelled by burning ambition as he set out on his second White House crusade, almost as soon as he and John Kerry lost to President George W. Bush in 2004.
But the rich historic potential of the campaigns of rivals Obama and Clinton who were vying to be the first African American, and first woman president, suffocated his hopes.
