As anybody who attended his town meetings could attest, he may have been the most effective campaigner of all - capable of establishing an instant connection with audiences, then sweeping them up with a moving, coherent story about what was wrong with America and how he proposed to fix it. Edwards was also, I would argue, a more versatile campaigner than his rivals. He was terrific working the grassroots, much like Obama, but also excelled in the debates, just as Clinton has. As his advisers were constantly reminding reporters - most memorably, through this priceless video - focus groups frequently named Edwards the overwhelming "winner" in those televised exchanges. Alas, a media preoccupied with the Clinton-Obama rivalry rarely seemed to notice.

Still, if Edwards wants to blame somebody for his defeat, he shouldn't look at the media. He should look at himself. And I mean that in the best sense possible. Edwards' biggest problem may have been that he was too compelling - so compelling that his rivals effectively adopted his agenda. From the beginning, Edwards was positioning himself as the champion of Americans struggling to get ahead financially. And rather than simply offer populist rhetoric, he backed it with a serious, comprehensive set of policies.

Edwards may no longer hold a place on the presidential ballot, but his populism, often expressed with great zeal, has impacted the presidential race in innumerable ways, some of which have yet to be realized.

At the heart of Edwards’ message was the need to speak out for the poor and disenfranchised—those people whom the Senator often referred to as “the real underdogs in this election.” He was the first to propose a universal health care plan—ensuring coverage for all Americans—and the first among the Democratic candidates to make poverty and global warming a key focus of his campaign.

For Edwards, the need to combat these problems was a “moral test,” and he referred to such issues as “the causes of my life.”

Not without fault, Edwards was sometimes criticized for his changing positions on the Iraq war and for oversimplifying the problem of lobbyists. Yet he was honest in admitting that his initial support of funding the war “was a mistake.”

Upon leaving an event in Springfield, Missouri, on Monday, that drew over 1,000 Edwards supporters, a high-school English teacher related his message to a line from Shakespeare she had recently taught her 12th grade class.

“To thine ownself be true,” she said, quoting a famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “Edwards inspires because he’s pushed issues not always politically popular. And for that he deserves credit.”

It must have been a tortured decision for Edwards, is all I can say. The crippling loss in South Carolina. Then the calls to Obama and Hillary.

And now it's over, his five-year quest for the presidency. "It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path," Edwards told a small crowd in New Orleans, as Elizabeth Edwards and their three children stood beside him.

What I can't really say is this: why his campaign never took off. Why, despite his insistent message about the plight of the poor and the middle-class, his landmark health-care plan, his vow to end the war in Iraq, his railing against corporate greed, he couldn't generate much heat. Was the national giddiness over a first black or a first woman president too much to overcome for a white guy from the South? Was it the obsessive narrative about the $400 hair cut, the sprawling mansion and the hedge fund that did him in? Was there too much John Kerry baggage? Or maybe--and this comes from the ever-delightful Chris Matthews--Edwards was just too "glamorous"?

Whatever the reasons, the media can finally return to what it longed to do all along with the Democrats: focus on Obama and Hillary in their increasingly nasty battle for the nomination.

It's going to be a long, long season.

Both did pledge to Edwards to continue to carry his message of poverty and fight the good fight. I wouldn't hold my breath. It's hard to imagine either candidate stopping to talk to homeless people camped near a bridge, as Edwards did in New Orleans on his way to give his speech. Or picking up a hammer to go off and build houses for Habitat for Humanity, which Edwards and his family did right after his poignant speech.

In a campaign that was often too short on substance and too much about glitz, I will miss his voice.

Farewell to John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani. Guess which one is planning to devote his life to helping the poor? No fair looking it up.

From the moment a politician announces his or her candidacy—at a hometown VFW hall or, maybe, in front of an aircraft carrier (as John Kerry did in 2004)—finding the right backdrop that’ll play on TV is huge.

John Edwards offered a new twist on the technique yesterday when he chose to announce his decision to drop out of the presidential race in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward neighborhood—the very place he announced his candidacy more than a year earlier.

Back then, the scene looked more than a little contrived, bordering on exploitative, with the former senator, clad in jeans and a too-crisp work shirt, standing amid the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina a year and a half earlier.

But there was a kind of poetry in his return to the scene yesterday. Wearing virtually the same costume, standing before a backdrop that showed signs of progress, Edwards brought his anti-poverty Two Americas campaign theme full circle—as if he were simply going back to the work of building "One America," one neighborhood at a time.

...Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas. And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.

To understand the extent of the Edwards effect, you have to think about what might have been.

At the beginning of 2007, it seemed likely that the Democratic nominee would run a cautious campaign, without strong, distinctive policy ideas. That, after all, is what John Kerry did in 2004.

If 2008 is different, it will be largely thanks to Mr. Edwards. He made a habit of introducing bold policy proposals — and they were met with such enthusiasm among Democrats that his rivals were more or less forced to follow suit.

It’s hard, in particular, to overstate the importance of the Edwards health care plan, introduced in February.

Before the Edwards plan was unveiled, advocates of universal health care had difficulty getting traction, in part because they were divided over how to get there. Some advocated a single-payer system — a k a Medicare for all — but this was dismissed as politically infeasible. Some advocated reform based on private insurers, but single-payer advocates, aware of the vast inefficiency of the private insurance system, recoiled at the prospect.

With no consensus about how to pursue health reform, and vivid memories of the failure of 1993-1994, Democratic politicians avoided the subject, treating universal care as a vague dream for the distant future.

But the Edwards plan squared the circle, giving people the choice of staying with private insurers, while also giving everyone the option of buying into government-offered, Medicare-type plans — a form of public-private competition that Mr. Edwards made clear might lead to a single-payer system over time. And he also broke the taboo against calling for tax increases to pay for reform.

Suddenly, universal health care became a possible dream for the next administration. In the months that followed, the rival campaigns moved to assure the party’s base that it was a dream they shared, by emulating the Edwards plan. And there’s little question that if the next president really does achieve major health reform, it will transform the political landscape.

Similar if less dramatic examples of leadership followed on other key issues. For example, Mr. Edwards led the way last March by proposing a serious plan for responding to climate change, and at this point both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are offering far stronger measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases than anyone would have expected to see on the table not long ago.

Unfortunately for Mr. Edwards, the willingness of his rivals to emulate his policy proposals made it hard for him to differentiate himself as a candidate; meanwhile, those rivals had far larger financial resources and received vastly more media attention. Even The Times’s own public editor chided the paper for giving Mr. Edwards so little coverage.

Labels: 2008 election, identity politics, John Edwards