THE EDWARDS ANNOUNCEMENT, AND THE POLITICO. Elizabeth has bone cancer, but the Edwards's appear determined to seek treatment while continuing the campaign, so the political effect of this is relatively minor, aside from Elizabeth's remarkable performance before the cameras this morning. They've not run a sappy conference, and so I won't dip into what is, at this point, a personal health issue for them, other than to say that I've known Elizabeth for a number of years now, she's always been overwhelmingly kind and impressive, I'm not surprised that she'd prefer to continue participating in a national campaign rather than recede to receive treatment, and I'm glad to know someone of her great intelligence and humanity will remain in public life. The real loser here, though, is The Politico. CNN must have mentioned The Politico 65 times in the long minutes before the press conference, as the new magazine reported this morning that they'd confirmed Edwards' was suspending campaigning. I was surprised by that report, as I hadn't been able to confirm the same, but The Politico has been getting early confirmation on a host of recent stories, and they seem to have the magic touch. Now, though, I'm beginning to wonder. The story they confirmed was obviously untrue, even though the rumors were overwhelmingly in that direction. I'd be interested to know, now, what happened. The magazine has been early to get confirmation on a number of big stories lately, and a cynical observer may wonder if they haven't been calling the very likely "confirmed" in order to raise their profile. It'll be interesting to see if they address this on their web site. Update: Ben Smith does address it. Good for them! This is the sort of transparency that's good to see from the new media venture. --Ezra Klein
