Elizabeth Edwards is joining the D.C.-based think tank the Center for American Progress as a Senior Fellow working on health care issues and occasional blogger. (Full disclosure, I used to work at CAP as an editor of CampusProgress.org, a youth politics web magazine.) Yes, Edwards joining CAP means she must have been wooed by the organization's president and founder, John Podesta, who is a fierce Hillary Clinton loyalist and Bill's former White House chief of staff. But I wouldn't read too much into that, as Jay Carney does at Swampland. Carney speculates:
CAP, which was founded by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta, has been operating for the past two years as a kind of Hillary Clinton Administration-in-waiting. We already know Elizabeth believes Hillary Clinton's health care plan is superior to Barack Obama's -- in part because Hillary's plan is much closer, in its claims to universality, to the one put forward by Elizabeth's husband. But does the fact that Elizabeth is coming aboard CAP signal that John is finally going to endorse, and that he'll throw his support to Clinton?
CAP is much less dominated by Clinton supporters than is generally assumed. When I worked there, equal numbers of senior staff left or side-lined for the Obama campaign as for the Clinton campaign. Among younger employees who jumped ship, more went to Obama. Several CAP employees also left for Team Edwards, or were known to have supported him. Key among them was Jennifer Palmieri, who remained at CAP as Senior Vice President for Communications, and is known to be close friends with Elizabeth. My guess is that Palmieri played an important role in bringing Elizabeth to the think tank, and that presidential politics played almost no role at all.
--Dana Goldstein
