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John Edwards admitted to an extramarital affair in 2006 yesterday.

John Edwards was, and remains (in a fantasy, never-gonna-happen now, daydream sorta way) the best candidate for Vice president to Barack Obama. The fact that he was caught by the National Enquirer cheating on his (sick) wife - a political tradition of sorts, just ask John McCain - has ended his political career, even though none of the political media or leftwing blogger elite will admit yet that this is so (though notably, Edwards' name did mysteriously vanish from all left-sphere Veep speculation.)

Now, the LA Times (media) and The Moderate Voice (blog) are weighing in on the scandal, lambasting the rest of the media/blogsphere for failing to cover the issue. I must note that I was one of the few political bloggers - and the sole lefty political blogger, who favored Edwards for Veep - to take the story seriously. I also diaried it at DailyKos and was predictably flamed into oblivion.

Did the media and the blogsphere drop the ball? I actually don't think so. Yes it is a story, but on the scale of importance, does it really matter? You can argue that its of relevance since Edwards might have been tapped for Veep, but Edwards was out of the running for Veep as soon as the Enquirer broke the story, and no media/blog pile-on was required. I don't see any actual harm done and I disagree with the contention that "nothing will ever be the same". After all, the media has been dropping stories about President Bush - as a candidate, and as a President - routinely, and the political blogsphere(s) will always have an ingrained blindspot towards critique of its own political side. What is important that there remain some bloggers who aren't afraid of arguing against the grain. I am not ashamed of my earlier post on Edwards and yet, I am also not happy that I wasn't proven wrong.

Labels: Edwards