Edwards is Out

And then there were two...

By dropping out of the race, John Edwards is setting up a Hillary Clinton - Barack Obama head-to-head showdown for Super Tuesday.

NEW ORLEANS -- Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race for the White House on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside "so that history can blaze its path" in a campaign now left to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November," said Edwards, ending his second campaign in a hurricane-ravaged section of New Orleans where he began it more than a year ago.

Edwards said Clinton and Obama had both pledged that "they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency."

"This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause," he said before a small group of supporters. He was joined by his wife Elizabeth and his three children, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack.

Edwards said that on his way to make his campaign-ending statement, he drove by a highway underpass where several homeless people live. He stopped to talk, he said, and as he was leaving, one of them asked him never to forget them and their plight.

"Well I say to her and I say to all those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you. We will fight for you. We will stand up for you," he said, pledging to continue his campaign-long effort to end what he frequently said was "two Americas," one for the powerful, the other for the rest.

That sounds like something straight out of a rejected Hollywood screenplay.

On the way to announce his withdrawal from the race, Edwards talked to some homeless people by a highway underpass?

Hard to believe that wasn't orchestrated. Where are the photos of the encounter? Are we to accept that no member of the press was in tow to capture the event? Didn't an aide have a camera phone?

The former North Carolina senator did not immediately endorse either Clinton, seeking to become the first female president, or Obama, the strongest black candidate in history.

Nedra Pickler characterizes Obama as the "strongest black candidate in history."

I guess you could say she's half right, though Jesse Jackson probably feels dissed by the comment. I suspect that Al Sharpton is somewhat ticked off. He always is.

In any event, two are left standing out of the large Dem primary field, three if you count Bill.