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John Edwards was going to be the keynote speaker at a poverty conference held by Mari Culver. The event was scheduled for June 19th, but was postponed due to the flooding and was to be rescheduled.

Charlotte Eby is reporting that John Edwards has cancelled that appearance.

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who admitted last week to an extramarital affair with a videographer chronicling his campaign, has cancelled a scheduled appearance in Iowa next month.

Edwards had been slated to appear as the keynote speaker for Iowa First Lady Mari Culver’s Conference on Solutions to Poverty.

Troy Price, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, said they received word today about Edwards’ cancellation and are working to secure a new keynote speaker for the event.

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Cenk Uyger from the Young Turks asks how John Edward’s affair is different than John McCain’s?

Now, we get to the most relevant question - if John Edwards’ political career is done, why isn’t John McCain’s? John McCain had a well-documented affair on his first wife, with his current wife. He has admitted in the books he has written about his life that he ran around with several different women while still married to his first wife. And don’t forget that he left her for a younger, richer woman - multi-millionaire Cindy Hensley who is now Cindy McCain - after she had been severely hurt in a car accident.

So, why are McCain’s actions any more excusable than Edwards’? Because it was thirty years ago? Does that wash it away? Will we be fine with Edwards running for office again in a couple of years because then it will all be in the past? What is the statute of limitations on an affair?

Remember Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan and Ross Perot were so upset with how John McCain dealt with his first wife that they didn’t forgive him for a very, very long time. Perot still hasn’t forgiven him. In fact, he said recently about McCain dumping his first wife for Cindy, “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.”

So, I want every pundit who condemns John Edwards today to tell me what the difference between him and McCain is and why John McCain shouldn’t also be run out of politics for his adulterous affairs and what he did to his first wife.

Here’s more on John McCain’s affair while his wife was recovering from a terrible auto accident.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons

had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Also you can’t forget Newt Gingrich ditching his wife while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer.

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Paul Rosenberg at Open Left takes a look at a possible Obama/Edwards ticket and says they would blow out McCain.

It looks like Edwards gives Obama a bump in the upper midwest states and in the southeast.

Electoral College: Obama 309, McCain 145, Toss-up 84
National popular vote: Obama 49.9%-42.2% McCain

I’d be happy, really happy, if Obama chose Edwards as VP. However, I think the reason Edwards gives Obama the biggest bump of all possible VP candidates is because Edwards has the highest name recognition of all of them not named Clinton.

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John Edwards is coming back to Iowa next month.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards next month will make his first trip back to Iowa since the state’s caucuses.

Edwards will be keynote speaker at a June 19 poverty conference in Des Moines organized by Mari Culver, wife of Gov. Chet Culver. The conference will bring state officials, service providers, business leaders and others together to work toward ending poverty.

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Richard Doak’s column in the Des Moines Register today is about the excitement of young people and their great possibility to influence change throughout the world.

The most fascinating possibility of 2008 is that the next Greatest Generation might be about ready to make its debut.

Hang around a college campus and it becomes easy to believe in the possibility. There’s something about today’s young people that inspires confidence.

Nationally, young adults are defying past patterns by turning out in record numbers to vote in the caucuses and primaries. They tend to vote differently from their elders, and there is an almost palpable sense among them that a new day is dawning.

These young adults are the leading edge of what has been labeled the Millennial Generation, people born between 1982 and 2003.

Some pop historians see history as being driven by generational change. If they’re right, America is approaching a turning point, and it will be the Millennials who determine the new direction.

John Mayer had the hit song Waiting for the World to Change where he talks about how the Millennial Generation is fully aware of the problems the world faces. How can they not be with 9/11, Global Climate Change, Hurricane Katrina, and a misguided war in Iraq weighing so heavily during the time their worldview was being formed?

However before this election, they haven’t been compelled to enter the political arena that they viewed as being stale, full of partisan bickering, and influenced by big money. Instead, they have chose to focus their energy on community action, through community involvement, church activities, environmental action, and building communities online.

This diary from Daily Kos that I posted about back in October further explains this…

…we look upon our broken system and choose not to scream at the rubble, but to take it upon ourselves to promote social change in our own way. So we volunteer. We join groups. We organize at the community level. We splinter off into thousands of glittering pockets of political change. We don’t mobilize nationalize because there is no call, no sense of need to so.

The 2008 election has called this generation to become involved politically. With no incumbent running for their party’s nomination, this election is truly a changing of the guard.

The candidates have called the Millennial Generation to become active in politics. Barack Obama has turned out huge numbers of young adults to support him, as has Hillary Clinton. Ron Paul has had tremendous success fundraising and organizing online. Chris Dodd called for people to get involved in national service. John Edwards started his campaign with the theme Tomorrow Begins Today and held his first event helping rebuild New Orleans.

John Mayer ended his song, saying that one day the Millennial Generation will have the power to change the world.

We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

That day is coming sooner than later.

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I posted my report about Obama gaining a national delegate at the 4th District Convention at Daily Kos and it sparked a lot of discussion. The discussion at Kos was if Obama won a delegate in the 4th District or if he ended up losing a delegate overall.

Coming into the convention, Obama had 15 delegates secured with 3 delegates up for grabs. The national media counted the hens before the eggs hatched and wrongly projected that Obama would pick up 17 delegates.

A person who attended the 1st District convention posted their results in the comments section and it looks like the Edwards group was able to become viable and won a national delegate. If the Edwards group wasn’t viable, Obama would have likely won that national delegate.

After check-in, Edwards had 79 delegates but needed 81 to be viable. There were 7 undecideds. If only 2 undecideds went to Edwards, he was going to get a delegate, so the result in the 1st District was not at all unexpected. But the funny (in a sardonic way) thing was that some Clinton delegates went over to Edwards, just to make sure Obama didn’t get that extra delegate.

1st alignment (534 delegates at check-in):
Obama - 281 (52.6%)
Clinton - 167 (31.3%)
Edwards - 79 (14.8%)
Undecided - 7 (1.3%)

2nd alignment (out of 533 - someone left early?):
Obama - 283 (53.1%)
Clinton - 156 (29.3%)
Edwards - 94 (17.6%)

National Delegates:
Obama - 3 (2 males, 1 female)
Clinton - 2 (1 male, 1 female)
Edwards - 1 (female)

National Alternate: Obama - 1 (male)

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Last night, I read that John Edwards cancelled campaign stops in two states today to give a major speech in New Orleans on poverty. Today it is being reported that Edwards will be dropping out of the race.

The former North Carolina senator will not immediately endorse either candidate in what is now a two-person race for the Democratic nomination, said one adviser, who spoke on a condition of anonymity in advance of the announcement.

Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of his wife’s recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer that she thought Their decision sparked a debate about family duty and public service. But Elizabeth Edwards remained a forceful advocate for her husband, and she was often surrounded at campaign events by well-wishers and emotional survivors cheering her on.

Edwards ran a great campaign in Iowa and it showed with a strong 2nd place finish. Unfortunately, He was unable to spread his populist message in the other states, partly due to the condensed calendar and partly due to the media.

I would be shocked if Edwards endorsed Clinton with their differences on accepting money from lobbyists. Edwards has been campaigning on a theme of change and Barack Obama most closely matches Edwards rhetoric. It would be a big boost for Obama if Edwards would endorse before February 5th.

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Robert Novak is saying that Barack Obama has had discussions with John Edwards about Edwards being the Attorney General in an Obama Administration.

“Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards will be named attorney general in an Obama administration,” according to Robert Novak.

The appointment of Edwards “would please not only the union leaders supporting him for president but organized labor in general. The unions relish the prospect of an unequivocal labor partisan as the nation’s top legal officer.”

“In public debates, Obama and Edwards often seem to bond together in alliance against front-running Sen. Hillary Clinton. While running a poor third, Edwards could collect a substantial bag of delegates under the Democratic Party’s proportional representation. Edwards then could try to turn his delegates over to Obama in the still unlikely event of a deadlocked Democratic National Convention.”

Novak isn’t the most popular reporter amongst Democrats, but I think Edwards as Attorney General is an excellent idea. Taking on the corporate interests that control Washington DC has been the theme of Edwards’ campaign. As Attorney General, Edwards would have the ability to investigate and hold accountable corporations that have abused the system.

Obama could name Edwards as his choice for Attorney General before the general election and Edwards could campaign on the need to restore the Constitution when it comes to domestic spying, torture, and Habeas Corpus and against corruption in government.

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The strong debate performance by Edwards is paying off in the polls. With the South Carolina primary tomorrow, John Edwards is gaining on Hillary Clinton and has a chance for a 2nd place finish. There are two polls that show Edwards within 4% and 5% of Clinton for 2nd place, both within the margin of error.

From Political Wire…

The survey finds Sen. Barack Obama leading with 38%, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton at 25% and John Edwards at 21%.

Said pollster John Zogby: “The real movement here is by John Edwards, who is the only one who continues to gain ground in our three-day tracking poll. His increase appears to be coming from African American voters who are slowly making up their minds.”

The State: “Watch John Edwards. With only a day left before Saturday’s S.C. Democratic presidential primary, the former U.S. senator from North Carolina and S.C. native is making a move.”

If Edwards can pull off a 2nd place finish in South Carolina, it would be a big blow to the Clinton campaign and Obama would have the momentum going into February 5th. Edwards would have lived to fight another day and win some delegates on February 5th.

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In the last debate, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton went back and forth on the difference between trial lawyers and corporate lobbyists. John Edwards did a great job refuting a rightwing talking point in his answer about trial lawyers.

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