John Edwards Will Endorse Obama This Evening in Michigan
Edwards Will Declare his Super-delegate Vote to Obama. Presumably his 19 Pledged Delegates will now make their own Choices. Obama now leads by 170 delegates.
New York Time, May 14th, 2008
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who bowed out of the presidential race in January, is expected to endorse Senator Barack Obama at a rally being held here tonight.
Officials announced the news shortly after Mr. Obama landed here late this afternoon. The campaign has timed the announcement to coincide with the start of the major evening newscasts, which would have otherwise focused on Senator Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in West Virginia, which raised new questions about Mr. Obama’s strength with white working class voters.
Mr. Obama’s campaign is hoping it will be taken as the start of a partywide coalescence around Mr. Obama as the Democratic nominee.
The endorsement ended months of speculation over Mr. Edwards’s preference in the Democratic nominating contest, during which he mostly stayed silent and close to home in Chapel Hill with his wife, Elizabeth.
But in recent days, Mr. Edwards had made his choice all but obvious, giving a series of television interviews hinting that he was close to endorsing Mr. Obama, who last week he called “clearly the nominee at this point.”
On the campaign trail in the past year, Mr. Edwards regularly attacked so-called establishment politicians like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and teamed with Mr. Obama against her in debates.
His campaign sounded similar themes to Mr. Obama’s – both candidates positioned themselves as change agents who would clean house in Washington.
Throughout his second bid for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Edwards clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton, criticizing her for accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists, a practice that he fiercely opposed.
And much of his campaign pitch centered on the notion that Washington politicians have become corrupted by the influence of lobbyists for drug companies, oil companies and other corporate interests.
“You can’t just trade corporate Republicans for corporate Democrats,” he told audiences frequently, an attack aimed at Mrs. Clinton. Click here to read more from the New York Times.