John Edwards was working on poverty and talking about poverty and he was sincere. Siding with the poor in America costs votes, it does not win them. People in America hate the poor. They assume if you are poor in America it is because you deserve to be poor, that you are morally bankrupt and lazy. There is no glory in advocating for the poor.

It's likely he is equally sincere in believing that anything he does now would do more harm that good and this his poor reputation would tarnish the organizations he works with.

Politicians do NOT talk about the poor because Americans really don't give a damn. America is the land of opportunity and it's unpatriotic and disloyal to be poor.

Salon is right to trash the man and everything he did for cheating on his sick wife. He should be pilloried. Calvinism lives.

It seems like the more obvious issue is efficacy and interest.

Maybe Edwards is not a particularly effective leader. Sounds like he said things he couldn't back up. But since he was one of the few, brave people to touch what has been termed class warfare he was always going to be fighting an uphill battle.

I don't understand why it is necessary to impugn his motives. It also seems foolish since there are better, easier routes to self-aggrandizing that also happen to be really lucrative. Up until recently joining the GOP was the most obvious. Why would you take on a battle to fight something that as RuthAlice notes goes against the grain and has little support from a culture that has been long-indoctrinated to blame people for their own poverty and suffering. If he had purely selfish motives why not follow the path of least resistance?

I always thought a lot of Edwards for taking on that battle. I would think the best way to get those changes affected that he promised was winning. I don't think losing and being unable to carry out those promises shows that he was insincere - it shows that the victor takes the spoils in our system. Maybe he could have had better follow through as a private citizen I don't know how effective he could be in that capacity either.

I think people are let down by the failure of his message but a lot of us (myself included) were looking for the person who could possibly bring about some of what they promised and at the moment of the election that looked like Obama to enough of us to sideline Edwards.

If all he was interested in was votes, then helping the poor was a very dumb way to go after votes. He had MY vote because he cared about poor people, but I'm weird.

So I don't know. I definitely don't think Edwards matters any more; nobody's going to trust him with much any more.

Why is Salon spending time on this? Come to think of it, why am I spending time on it?

I get the impression he's not into trying to lead anything right now. He has a dying wife and kids to raise (and yes he attended his 5th grade daughter's graduation) and nobody wants him to run for anything. Sad that Salon is so bored that they still want to kick the man around while he's still down.

Ithink John Edwards tried to pick up the mantle of RFK, who truly was touched by the terrible poverty he saw, but I never sensed that he was sincere. As blogger Francis Holland once said, "Electing Edwards to challenge the status quo is like supporting a queen to challenge the monarchy."

I am not a puritan by any means but really dislike a hypocrite such as Edwards who condemned Bill Clinton in 1999 saying "This president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter"

Elizabeth Edwards, who wanted her husband to quit the presidential race because of the destruction it would cause her family if the affair with Rielle Hunter came out, deserves far better than this lightweight.

FTFY!

Who is President, John Edwards?

OH LOOK! THERE'S BLAGOJEVICH!

Smoke, Mirrors, Misdirection!

This article seems like a cheap shot, based on not a whole lot other than speculation and personal animosity. I was never a big John Edwards supporter, but he did talk about many issues that the other candidates were scared to mention.

Anyone who believes Mr. Edwards was anything other than an opportunist is immune to evidence or hasn't paid attention. The guy ran for Senate as a conservative democrat (having never even bothered to vote his entire adult life), supported the iraq war and supported the bankruptcy bill (clearly showing his deep commitment to poor and working folks, provided they happened to be ceo of a credit card company). After losing the vice presidency, he went to work for a hedge fund (when asked why later, he said, "um to learn how it, um, . . . affects poverty? Now, his story -- from his 24000 sq. ft. mansion -- is that his family needed the money, which requires no comment.) When he saw that the Clinton-Democrat peg was occupied by better people, he sought a new niche. He had no (zero) commitment to poverty prior to this -- the notion that he had been fighting poverty his "whole lahf" is risible. The guy based his entire second presidential campaign on the foundation of moral character and truthtelling -- then proceeded to lie about his war vote and his marriage, and his affair, and the paternity of the child, insisting that he was 99% honest even as he told that appalling baldfaced lie about only straying while the cancer was in remission. Note in the WAPO story, even now, his self image is pitched between the poles of "i did saintly superhuman things or maybe i had a foible or two." Folks looking for a progressive champion need to wake up. You're being played.

"...as far back as 2004, hearing him speak always gave me the sense that he was, at his core, insincere, that -- even more than most politicians -- he was someone who would say or do anything for personal gain, smile at you and tell you exactly what you wanted to hear and not mean a word of it."

So he's a liberal/progressive.