Why? Because the media refused to cover him.

Bzzzzzzzt! Wrongo, thanks for playing.

The media covered him in the early stages, and his coverage began to drop off as his numbers dropped.

Once a candidate stops drawing voters, that candidate is no longer "news" and does not get covered. It's really that simple. The press is simply not under any obligation whatsoever to cover non-events, non-news, or non-viable candidates.

Look, I liked Edwards, he'd have been my second choice, I agreed with a lot of what he said. He just didn't get any attention from the voters after his second-place finish in Iowa - which, by the way, did get some ink and pixels, you may recall, and if anything ought to have propelled him upwards, that was it. It didn't.

As a non-viable candidate, drawing in the low double-digits, I'm sorry to say he was getting as much coverage as he warranted.

It's painful to realize, as many of his backers will now have to, that his message simply didn't get him the votes he needed. And compounding that, he didn't have the cash to compete in the 2/5 "national primary", where TV is more important than personal appearances - national ad buys are very, very expensive.

There is no media conspiracy. The press is not there to advocate for candidates, they are there to report on candidates. And those with no prospects simply can't look forward to much coverage beyond the curiosity factor.

I hope Elizabeth is OK. She seems like a wonderful person, and I hope his dropping today gives them some time to spend together, both with their kids and with each other.

John Edwards ran a good campaign that never caught on with voters. Why? Who can say? There is certainly much truth in what he talked about, and much to be angry about in Corporate America. And it was that lack of traction with the voters that made the news media lose interest in him, not the other way 'round, as many would have it.

Personally, I think he'd make a great AG. Or put him on the Supreme Court - he's young enough to be a force there for a while.

Thanks for the good run, John, and best wishes for the future.

Someone who can't understand why a bunch of musicians are getting 85% of his money.

A report out of Hillary Clinton's campaign says that Obama ran an ad in Florida. Has anyone seen a follow up on that?

When you run national ads, as he has done, one of the consequences is that they will play in places where they would not if it had been a local buy.

I get the impression Sen. Clinton hopes that if the nomination she (erroneously) believes she rightfully deserves does not come to her, that the Dems lose in November. To accomplish this, she will, as she has, encourage her surrogates and supporters to trash Sen. Obama to the point where he would arrive at the general election damaged enough to lose. If she didn't want to approach things this way, all it would require is a simple directive from her to stop it.

Say what you will about Sen. Obama, he has not descended, and will not descend, to the trailer-park level of politics the Clintons have employed.

I further suspect that in the event of an Obama nomination, the Clinton camp will (vocally) withhold their active support in the general, preferring to watch the Republicans take the White House again, so she can try in 2012 as the Dems' "white knight" after four more years of Republican malfeasance.

It is not a stretch to believe this. And America deserves better than someone who believes the Presidency is hers by some perverse right of succession.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is, after all, a private citizen. She is the daughter of an assassinated President, quite well accomplished in her own right, and still, a private citizen.

Edward Kennedy is the second-longest-serving Democratic Senator in US history.

Both endorsements matter, and the endorsement of such a Senator (in fact, of any Senator) can, in this and most cases, reasonably be expected to garner more headlines. That's the way of the news business.

And in the end, each of them has one vote to cast in their respective primary elections.

I heard on CNN this morning that the number of rockets going from Gaza into southern Israel had dropped significantly.

I'm not really trying to equate correlation and causation here, still, isn't it at least worth a closer look? Might it not be that if the Gaza Palestinians had something even incrementally closer to what most of us consider a "normal life" the number of "incidents" would drop somewhat?

I offer a suggestion: Watch the openness of the border, and note the number of rockets, and see if that number increases when the border is closed, as it will very likely be at some point. Then take from that observation the possible conclusion that opening Gaza to the outside had a positive effect and act accordingly.

Another, even more "blue-sky" suggestion: The best way to turn off the intifada might well be for every adult Palestinian to have both a full-time and a part-time job. (Real jobs, that is.) I suspect the number of "incidents" then would be significantly lessened.

Discuss.