Edwards shunned

[Trish]

John Edwards calling former staffers asking for forgiveness

By THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Updated Tuesday, August 26th 2008, 8:41 AM




DENVER (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Denver) - John Edwards (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/John+Edwards+%28Politician%29) is burning up the phone lines, begging former aides and backers to forgive him for lying about his affair - but hearing their rage instead.
As Democrats kick off their convention Monday, the onetime presidential contender is a man without a party - or a political future - trying to rebuild bridges through dozens of remorseful phone calls.
It's proving a hard sell with onetime true believers.

"I let you down, and I'm sorry," is a common refrain of these messages, said another top ex-assistant on the receiving end of one of the calls.
"It was kind of pathetic, to tell you the truth," said the ex-aide, who said he didn't return the call and doesn't expect to speak to his former boss again.
For months, the former North Carolina (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/North+Carolina) senator and John Kerry (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/John+Kerry)'s 2004 running mate vigorously denied National Enquirer (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/The+National+Enquirer) reports of an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Rielle+Hunter), who since gave birth to a child.
On Aug. 8, Edwards admitted the 2006 affair with Hunter in an ABC interview - when his wife Elizabeth's cancer was in remission - but insisted he isn't the father of her son.
One source who compared notes with other former colleagues said Edwards makes no attempt to justify or rationalize his behavior in these desperate phone conversations. He simply expresses his regret for deceiving them and asks for their understanding and forgiveness.
Many think he's still not telling the truth.
"As painful as it will be for him, he needs to come clean," one of them said. "There's an overwhelming view that he's still lying."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/08/25/2008-08-25_john_edwards_calling_former_staffers_ask.html

[Stoner]

I don't have a link ATM but Democrats are pissed at his wife now because it turns out she knew about the affair and kept it quiet because at the time he was still in the race for the Dem ticket.

If he would have won her silence could have been crippling to the libbies. Not that Obama and his support for terrorists (Ayers) isn't crippling enough.

Just saying.

Looks like the whole Edwards family has been booted out of the circle.

Buh bye.

[Trish]

I think this is the story you're thinking of:


Critics Slam Elizabeth Edwards for Silence on Husband's Affair

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/images/service_ap_36.gif

RALEIGH, N.C. — Two weeks after a devastating revelation sent her husband into political exile, Elizabeth Edwards isn't getting the steady sympathy usually afforded to a woman scorned.
Instead, she's faced criticism from dedicated Democrats who think she was too willing to keep the affair a secret to help John Edwards' political ambitions, as well as her own.
At a time when she was expected to hold a prominent role in pushing an agenda of improved health care for Americans, she stands silent. While fellow Democrats converge in Denver to nominate Barack Obama for president, Edwards remains in seclusion in North Carolina.
It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.
But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband — a former U.S. senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee — said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.
"I think she's complicit," said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. "Obviously, she knew. While she's the victim, she clearly didn't stand in the way of the cover-up."
It wasn't until earlier this month that John Edwards acknowledged publicly he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a rookie filmmaker hired by his political action committee.
On a liberal blog that Elizabeth Edwards frequents, she explained why she stayed silent after her husband told her of the affair: "This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well."
Many people have come to know Elizabeth Edwards, 59, as a more forthright, revealing woman.
She wrote a memoir in 2007 that brought readers into the most wrenching moments of her life — the death of the couple's 16-year-old son and her 2004 breast cancer diagnosis. An attorney who worked in private practice and also taught at the University of North Carolina's law school, she first found out about the cancer the day after her husband and John Kerry lost their bid for the White House four years ago.
She has always had a passion for politics. Known for routinely writing about health care policy on the Internet, she has served as a visiting fellow at Harvard, where she held discussions with students and gave a speech after her husband dropped from the presidential race earlier this year. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said in June he would be "partnering" with her on health care policy, and she was expected to serve as a campaign voice to challenge Republican candidate John McCain on the issue.
Yet during a visit to North Carolina two weeks after Edwards admitted to cheating on his wife, Obama didn't mention Elizabeth Edwards — or her husband.
"It's a setback for both of them," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who helped President Clinton through his cheating scandal. "The question for her — as well as for him — is what is their foundation? What gives them a platform to engage in public issues?
"Their big challenge is convincing people that they will continue to be active in politics and they're going to continue to have a voice."
In a post on the liberal blog Daily Kos, where Edwards has her own diary, she pleaded for privacy and later seemed to explain why she stuck by her spouse and his presidential ambitions.
"An imperfect man with a truly progressive vision who spoke to and for those whom others ignored? Yes, that is who I supported," she wrote. "An imperfect man who had come to face his own imperfections and was seeking to redeem himself to those closest to him? Yes, that is who I supported."
Some responded to the affair with words of kindness, while others angrily suggested that keeping the secret was no less a sin that the one committed by her philandering husband.
"She knew she should not have participated in him running for president with this bomb waiting to go off. She did. She kinda loses my sympathy," wrote one poster.
"I believe we are all owed a huge apology, not self-serving claims for pity by both John and Elizabeth Edwards, who both knew about the affair and both decided to go forward and seek the Democratic candidacy, regardless of the Titanic risk," wrote another.
Elizabeth Edwards is famously a denizen of the Internet. But she has not posted under her own name at Daily Kos since that day, nor has she posted anything on the Web site of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington where she writes about health care.
A spokeswoman for the center, Andrea Purse, said Elizabeth Edwards still has a job there, but declined to comment further about her future role. Both Elizabeth and John Edwards have refused several requests for an interview.
Since her husband's admission, the only window into what Elizabeth Edwards has been thinking came from a People magazine interview with her brother and a close friend. They said she decided not to leave her husband, in part, because she is a mother of two young children fighting a cancer that has spread to her bone and cannot be cured.
"There was anguish — excruciating anguish — for her in dealing with this," Hargrave McElroy, a friend, told the magazine. "She was angry and furious and everything, but at one point she had to make a choice: Do I kick him out, or do we have a 30-year marriage that can be rebuilt."
If the story was engineered to defend Edwards' decision, it has failed to create an outpouring of understanding.
"I thought it was very naive on both their parts," said Betsy Wells, who was an Edwards delegate at the Democratic convention four years ago and worked for each of his three campaigns for office. "It would be very sad if he were the nominee of our party right now."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,410901,00.html

[nevadamedic]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/08/25/2008-08-25_john_edwards_calling_former_staffers_ask.html

Well, he did have a promising career until he started taking cue's out of Bill Clinton's playbook.

[nevadamedic]

I think this is the story you're thinking of:


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,410901,00.html

Well she shouldn't have tried to help him hide it. I have no symp for her either.

[Stoner]

I think this is the story you're thinking of:


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,410901,00.html

That be the one. Thanks, Trish.

[Alonzo]

Well, he did have a promising career until he started taking cue's out of Bill Clinton's playbook.

The problem is that Clinton understood how not to get a woman pregnant.

[Stoner]

The problem is that Clinton understood how not to get a woman pregnant.

Well none that we know of.

Hell, I know of a sure-fire way how not to get a woman pregnant but there may be children reading this so I'll shut my mouth now. :thumbsup:

[Trish]

The problem is that Clinton understood how not to get a woman pregnant.

:thumbsup: True enough! Although he should have picked one that didn't dribble down her chin. Would have saved a LOT of trouble!

[Stoner]

:thumbsup: True enough! Although he should have picked one that didn't dribble down her chin. Would have saved a LOT of trouble!

He should have cheated with a swallower. Would have made his life a lot easier (and fun)! :clapper:

[aaronssongs]

He should have cheated with a swallower. Would have made his life a lot easier (and fun)! :clapper:

Classless and tasteless.

[ECW]

Originally Posted by Stoner
He should have cheated with a swallower. Would have made his life a lot easier (and fun)!Classless and tasteless.

Agreed. But if you live in the proverbial glass house you really should not throw stones at others. should you?

[Elrathin]

I have no symp for her either.

So because she chose to keep it private and not publicize the affair, she was in the wrong? I mean what was she supposed to do, announce it to the world?

Sorry don't see that one. If she chose to forgive him and she knew about it, that is between her and him. Not the public.

[PostmodernProphet]

so, is Edwards attending the convention?......or is he touring with Hagel?.......

[ilikegw]

I don't think they should be blaming Elizabeth for anything. The woman is sick, possibly dying of a horrible disease and it wasn't her place to spill the beans. Edwards is a cad and he's the one who should take the blame for everything he's done. Shun that turd and leave his wife alone.

[Elrathin]

Edwards is a cad and he's the one who should take the blame for everything he's done. Shun that turd and leave his wife alone.

Not everything, it takes two to tango. The woman that slept with Edwards was well aware of his marriage as well.

[Easy90]

I have a hard time criticizing Elizabeth for not saying anything....mainly because she has enough on her plate to worry about, apparently... HOWEVER... Double bad for her husband though IMHO...for being such a dip wad to do it, and to pretend to be such a great "family man" in the process....

[ilikegw]

Not everything, it takes two to tango. The woman that slept with Edwards was well aware of his marriage as well.

I'm not talking about him being he "only" one to blame. But of the two, John and Elizabeth, he is to blame and not his wife, unless we find out she told him to screw around then I'd say blame her but until then, leave her alone.

Who cares about his mistress? She's a whore who slept with a dying woman's husband, I don't give her much thought.

[nevadamedic]

I don't think they should be blaming Elizabeth for anything. The woman is sick, possibly dying of a horrible disease and it wasn't her place to spill the beans. Edwards is a cad and he's the one who should take the blame for everything he's done. Shun that turd and leave his wife alone.

So because the woman is dying she gets a free pass? I think not. She lied and covered up the truth during her husbands campaign, everything we have come to expect from a Democrat. At least this one didn't get caught using a high priced excort service.

[Elrathin]

She lied and covered up the truth during her husbands campaign

Proof? What was she asked that she lied to?

[nevadamedic]

Proof? What was she asked that she lied to?

She never came forward with it. That is just as bad.

It really pisses me off how he played it up that he wife is dying and he was on stage crying with her when the lady taking the video of the event was waxing his knob. Maybe they are swingers?

[ilikegw]

It wasn't Elizabeth's job to inform the public that her husband was having an affair while she was sick and fighting cancer, going through painful chemo and radiation, that's all on Edwards' shoulders. It was his choice to lie and sneak around like a piece of crap, regardless if Elizabeth knew and kept it to herself.

Leave Elizabeth alone, she has enough to deal with.