Who Will Benefit from John Edwards?

In June of 2000, I was able to attend the annual fund-raising dinner for the South Dakota Democratic Party then titled the "Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Day" and has now been changed to the "George McGovern Dinner Day" in honor of our former Senator and Democratic nominee in 1972, George McGovern. At the dinner, the leaders of the party speak and they usually bring a nationally known speaker with them. In 2000, one of those speakers was a then little known Senator from North Carolina named John Edwards.

He was a dynamic speaker and one of my friends afterward said "He's going to run for President some day." Well, that day arrived in 2004 when he made a big push for the nomination and eventually bowed out and became the Vice-Presidential nominee under John Kerry. After the lose, I knew that Edwards would be back and in 2008 he had an uphill battle against two highly popular candidates in Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. According to the New York Times, Edwards has realized that his battle was too big of a hill to climb and has decided to drop out of the race. Unfortunately, his message of populism and fighting for the lower class never got enough attention away from the major candidates to make a huge impact for himself. The campaign, according to a CNN article, said that it just couldn't get the media attention that it needed to compete. What is ironic is that his dropping out is probably going to have a bigger impact than his running ever did, and here is why: it will help Barack Obama win the nomination.