Amanda, you are a far, far, far better person than I.  You went through a fairly severe personal and public trial in hopes of serving with this man, when he was soliciting money knowing that his campaign was probably, in poker terms, drawing dead.

He should have been spending 07 and 08 tending to his wife’s needs and encouraging Democrats to donate to other presidential and local candidates.  Or screwing the hell of this videographer further to the maximum extent of their mutual and common preference, but staying out of Democratic politics.  The financial and human resource waste on his fool’s errand candidacy astonishes me.

I get that most seekers of higher office are damaged goods, even the best of them.  Anyone who willingly gives up both money and family privacy for ego’s sake is probably damaged goods.  But Edwards had every reason to know that he could not “disappear” this situation.  Did he sleep or drink his way through through the Clinton presidency?  We need not pile on Edwards as if we were puritan scolds, but he suckered first himself and then the rest of us about his viability as a candidate.  Nor should we let Elizabeth off the hook; she knew that this candidacy had one hell of a vulnerability, but she encouraged Democrats to dump good money after bad anyway.

Meh.  It’s the equivalent of Yankees fans descending on Red Sox fan sites after a Sox loss.  Democrats are the other team, so when bad things happen to them, it’s, like, good, and you can high-five your bros about it.

Amanda, I hope you are being at least a little bit ironic when you say that the people you mock are all assholes who deserve it, while the people who mock someone you admire are always pathetic losers.

I’ve got an idea… lets stay mired in hand-wringing about this issue all the way through the November election!

Wouldn’t that be TEH SHYTE???

This story isn’t even 12 hours old and I already tire of it greatly…

Anybody know how the U.S. table tennis team looks over in Beijing?

I’m a severly underlaid erstwhile Edwards supporter who is less upset about the ambiguities of his amourousness than his less than robust support for our Amanda. I could care less who he sleeps with, but I care very much about the question of when he stands up or backs down. The main question is always however, “Which side are you on?” and Edwards was mostly better at that than the rest of a pretty good field.

Would we like Hillary better if we thought she’d gotten it on with her campaign manager? (My mother might have; my father thought so, and they all remained friends). Most likely it would have made no difference, nor should it. But common sense is inverted when we come to the news.

Lying, cheating, invasion, occupation, torture, treason: who cares? A romp in the sack? We’re all ears!

I don’t see how this hurts Obama.  All it does is keep McCain from being able to take control of a couple of news cycles.  Edwards probably wasn’t on Obama’s short list for Vice President. 

He was likely to land a cabinet appointment, and he might even have been Attorney General or something, if not for this.  Now he won’t be, and he’s diminished as a fundraising asset for the Dems.  Obama doesn’t need him for that, but there might have been some house races in the South where Edwards could have helped some people. 

Personally, I continue to be of the opinion that Edwards’ hypocrisy has always been in the contradiction between his luxury indulgences and his popular rhetoric.  When you send a jet to pick up your stylist and you fly him across the country to give you a haircut, you can’t go out and credibly talk about “Two Americas.”  That’s a bigger issue to me than his sexual misadventures.  I googled Obama’s haircut, and he gets “a regular clipper cut,” which is probably around $20. 

I am probably still going to vote for McCain, but I like Obama.  Edwards has been an asshole since long before he was a philanderer.  I know you like him though.  That’s why your wingnuts are laughing at you.

He threw you under the bus, Amanda, because your personal beliefs clashed too much with his political ambitions – damage control for a campaign Edwards’ own underhanded personal activities would have eventually destroyed anyway. 

A drowning fisherman who stands on the shoulders of his fellow in a bid to reach air – that’s understandable, except when it happens in the media green room.

What’s most offensive about Edwards’ conduct isn’t that he had sex with a consenting woman who wasn’t his wife.  What’s most offensive is that he paid her hush money from a PAC.  That is seriously wrong.  He misused monies that people had donated to support him as a candidate.  Paying off Hunter demonstrates a willingness to abuse the trust of those who supported him with cash and a lack of judgment that is relevant to his purported integrity as a politician.  And his lying about all of it time and again doesn’t help things much. 

My view of Elizabeth Edwards is greatly diminished insofar as he told her about the affair in 2006, yet she continued to go out and market him to the American public.  How incredibly disingenuous of her.  She’s apparently just a facade of a strong woman.  I can’t imagine the emotional turmoil John put her through, although I would agree that that’s a private matter for the Edwardses to deal with.  I also worry about what this will do to their children, but that, too, is for their family to deal with.  I guess they’ll all just have to suffer in their mansion with all of that money John made by playing on jurors’ emotions and prejudices.

Good point TruValu,

If everyone is going to be mad about Edwards endangering Edwards democratic chances at taking the WH if he had won the nomination, shouldn’t we also be mad at Elizabeth for covering up his affair, campaigning for him, and trying to get him the nomination despite knowing that if he won this could have killed Democratic chances to get in the WH (That is…assuming he really told her all about it in 2006)

I just have a hard time caring about it. If anything, it makes me more upset that there are still politicians with ambitions for higher office who think they can get away with getting some on the side.

I do think it would be really interesting if someone would track down Vicki Iseman or ask McCrazy a few pointed questions about her.

Amanda, Maybe I’m missing the tone of this post, but please explain how people who take pleasure out of Edwards’ humiliation are horrible people who really, really hate women.  I took deep pleasure in Larry Craig’s humiliation; does that make me a wonderful person who really, really hates men? (snark)

Along the lines of what Carmicus says, I’d guess that there are a lot of libertarians who support legal prostitution and who have plenty of sex who are excited about the downfall of someone they view as a “statist.”  It’s a silly defensive canard that all people who derive pleasure from Edwards’ fall from sanctimonious grace are “under-sexed troglodytes.”  Is Bill O, king of loofah and falafel, undersexed?  Hasn’t Edwards demonstrated himself to “deserve abuse because [he is a] horrible [person] who really, really hate[s] women, in no small part because [he was] stuck in a self-perpetuating no sex [with Elizabeth]/misogyny loop”?  How is what he did to Elizabeth not somehow misogynistic?  It doesn’t look like she gave him permission to go screwing the help.

carnicus, it makes you and everyone involved in the larry craig/mark foley phenomenon “underlaid” and “terminally uncool”. “bogus” too. totally rad to the max. etc.

it’s funny when you consider that obama’s national political carreer began when somebody operated on his behalf to unseal his opponent’s divorce records, thus uncovering the only sex scandal in history in which the shocking behavior exposed was a man not having sex with his wife. 

this edwards thing, in contrast, is the regular sort of scandal, in which we come to understand the man to be a fucking reptile.

“but, johnny! your wife!”

“its okay baby, her cancer’s in remission.”

@ Dana - yes, I’m sure the White House internship program does no background checks whatsoever, and therefore Russian spies can infiltrate the program and use teh sex to seduce and control the president.  Jesus Christ, does everything come down to Clinton with you people?  Get the fuck over it.

Your reaction to this is so predictably unprincipled that it’s boring.

Oh, it’s all about Johnny being humiliated because, of like, sex and stuff.

Not what he did to humiliate his cancer-stricken wife, but it’s all about Johnny.

This is feminism? Really?

I am concerned for Elizabeth right now; I am utterly furious with him.

And BTW, you’ve shown a lot of dignity in all of this Amanda, from the start.  We’ve had our differences, but I’ve always respected the way you dealt with Edwards/Donahue/the Wacked-out Right. 

I would probably have gone into HIDING. 

And PS:  It’s pretty obvious they’ve been gunning for Edwards from day one… and I am LIVID (as I was with Clinton, Gary Hart, et. al.) that he stupidly provided exactly what they were looking for. 

sigh, there goes my dream ticket…

Scott wrote:

Do you really think that no one is trying?

Kiddio, I read a metric buttload of liberal blogs. If there were anyone asking McCain pointed questions about his historical inability to keep his dick in his pants, I do think I’da heard about it. The Republican-leaning media is not talking about McCain’s numerous affairs.

And do you think that no one is trying to see if they can dig up similar dirt on Barack Obama?

I fully expect that the press is looking very, very hard for any indication that Obama has ever had an affair. But again, it is the Republican-leaning media. The reporters who think nosing into McCain’s dirty underwear is crude and unseemly are the same ones who’ll reliably hyperventilate with pure joy if they catch any Democrat patting his wife’s butt.

I could only imagine the great posts about this total misogynist prick if it was a republican and said, to clarify his position, “but I didnt love her.” So your boy admitted to her just being a fucktoy. I wish I was married to a liberal woman, as long as you never preach fidelity…you are in the clear…at least with your voters. What a joke.

If there were anyone asking McCain pointed questions about his historical inability to keep his dick in his pants, I do think I’da heard about it. The Republican-leaning media is not talking about McCain’s numerous affairs.

Amen, and isn’t it AMAZING how BLATANTLY they give him a pass?  Same with Cindy being a druggie. 

I’m so fucking sick of it!

“Because gloating about a hypocrite getting outed is a great liberal pleasure. But gloating about a liberal getting humiliated for his sex life?  The territory of not only the underlaid, but the terminally uncool. “

Er.  You know, there’s a right-wing strawman to the effect that we liberals are trying to destroy marriage and the traditional family.  It doesn’t help much when you claim that adultery is just part of a normal “sex life”.

And on a side note:  the only way Edwards could *not* be a hypocrite is if he was openly in favor of adultery and/or open marriages.  Presenting yourself - to your significant other and to the general public - as a faithful and monogamous partner while having another lover on the side strikes me as the very definition of hypocrisy.

A married guy had sex with someone else? Oh wow, that is news. And he didn’t give up his public life or ambitions thereafter? Tsk-freaking-tsk. And his wife didn’t dump him immediately upon finding out, or otherwise try to mess him over? WHooooo! What a facade of a strong woman!

People, there’s a reason this story was broken by the The National Enquirer.