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- John Edwards, after a long and inspiring campaign, is bowing out. If he'd run his 2008 campaign back in 2004 I think he'd be running for reelection right about now. Hard to see why he didn't stick around until February 5th though. My guess is he had polling that indicated a departure would help the candidate he favors (probably Obama). Or maybe it just took a while for the South Carolina results to sink in. In any event, he's done a great job of pushing the Democratic field to the left on issues from global warming to health care and for that I'm grateful. See also Jonathan Cohn and Ezra. Also see Tom on what went wrong and Dana on who benefits.
- One further note: the standard this-doesn't-help-Obama argument will concede that on an elite level most active high-information Edwards supporters like Obama more than Clinton, but then note that this doesn't necessarily reflect most voters' opinions. But, as I've written, superdelegates are almost certain to play a big role in the nomination and so elite support is important in and of itself since superdelegates are the establishment itself.
- The other big news of the day is McCain's victory in Florida. Of course since McCain is in the media's heart (as Chris Matthews put it) this is a decisive, campaign-ending blow to Mitt Romney and evidence of McCain's incredible strength as a candidate. Except that McCain only got where he is through sheer dumb luck and will be the target of vicious ads until February 5th. Still, it'd help if Romney could cheer up a little. As they say in Bronson, this ain't over.
- Y'know what is over? Rudy Giuliani's campaign. This has provoked a lot of chin scratching about where he went wrong, but we really should be talking about where the media went wrong. Why did most reporters simply refuse to grasp that the more voters learned about him the less they liked him? Giuliani had less chance of winning the Republican nomination than a syphilitic hobo has a of scoring a date at a sorority mixer. Kudos to NYT for explaining this, though would it have killed them to mention how every political pundit has played up his candidacy?
- Finally, since I took over the Lightning Round I've been dedicated to bringing you the best in wacky celebrity endorsements (and boy have there been a lot of them). Today, Obama picks up Hulk Hogan and Craig Newmark of craigslist (hat tip to Matt for both, but I think Ezra has the more ... substantive... take on the Hogan endorsement). Clinton counters with "Belvis, the black Elvis." Awesome.
