Levees Not War

‘The Democratic voters in America have made their choice, and so have I.’

John Edwards and Barack Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., May 14.

We were wondering if we would ever have the pleasure of seeing John Edwards’s endorsement of Barack Obama. And yes, we were grumbling impatiently and muttering ‘What’s taking him so damn long?’ But now we think maybe he has a good sense of timing after all. This endorsement feels well worth the wait. After Hillary’s big win in West Virginia, supported by that important demographic where Obama’s been falling short, John Edwards’s support is welcome indeed.

We’ll never know how Edwards’s endorsement might have helped had he chosen Obama earlier. The withholding of support was creating a kind of suspense, a vacuum of doubt. There was something missing from the ‘Obamomentum.’ As long as Edwards had not definitely stood up for Obama, it left open the possibility that he did not have confidence in Obama as a winner, or that he knew something the rest of us didn’t know, and that he might in the end go for Hillary. (The hesitation also made us wonder about John Edwards’s priorities. Were he and Elizabeth truly getting hung up (as reports suggested) on which candidate had the better health care plan? Did the entire endorsement really depend upon that single criterion?)

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