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.

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.

Likely got more gray hair than you do, Sparky.

Go crawl back under your bridge, troll.

He's the one I worry about. Willard Romney, who might well have outspent his rivals to the nomination, would have been easy to beat. Gomer the Huckabeast likewise. Ron Paul is simply a racist, paranoid right-wing looney-tune and might well have become the Dukakis or McGovern of the Republicans. (Can they have one right about now, please?)

McCain's phony "hero" shtick plays all too well in Middle America to suit me. Never mind that, as others have said, he made his "hero" rep by dropping bombs until he was shot down. He cuts off Hillary's "tough-girl" act at the pass. He'll draw the independents and undecideds out of the middle, even though he's just about certifiable, because she's so damn dislikeable.

If it's McCain vs. Clinton, Clinton most likely loses, and America loses either way.

After their truly idiotic "General Betray Us" ad fiasco, a MoveOn endorsement is unquestionably a liability.

Just what we'd need - for any Dem to have that bunch give the Republicans a club to use to beat on them.

And for those of you who still think "General Betray Us" was a good idea, ask yourselves this: How long did the discussion stay about what Petraeus was there to sell, and how quickly did it become (and how long did it stay) about the terminology in the ad headline?

Such stupidity we don't need.

MoveOn, stay the hell out of this.

You, like numerous other MoveOn defenders, have missed the point. By some significant distance, in fact.

What they did with their foolish headline-grab was to move the discussion in the public sphere away from the content of Petraeus' comments and toward their "ridicule" of him. No one talked about the lies he was sent there to tell, or who sent him, everyone just talked about MoveOn's too-clever-by-half pun.

That ad is now seen in the dictionary, illustrating the term "bad idea".

I guess, like everyone else, they have the right to be as idiotic in public as they choose. And I, and many others, are yearning for the days of the occasional unexpressed thought.

...maybe early Wednesday, if California comes in as slowly as it's been rumored.

We'll know then, and let's all realize that nobody's going to close it out tomorrow, not even by running the table, which in any case is not going to happen.

And remember that political campaigns, like battle plans, tend not to survive first contact unscathed.

All that said, Clinton emerging less than 100 delegates ahead once tomorrow's returns are in definitely favors Obama over the run of the rest of the primary campaign.

This non-conservative, non-Republican wants to know Sen. McCain's conception of the nature of those excesses. And the American voters might benefit from that information as well.

Not that I think he's well suited for the Presidency anyway - I don't, and he isn't. We just deserve to know where he stands, rather than hearing some allusion to "excesses" delivered offhandedly in an attempt to reinforce his false depiction of himself as an independent.