More Democrat Sex Scandals -- John Edwards Busted!

[Lisa]

Edwards Admits to Cheating on Sick Wife
By PETE YOST, AP posted: 49 MINUTES AGOcomments: 2255PrintSharefiled under: Election NewsText SizeAAAWASHINGTON (Aug. 8) --

Former presidential candidate John Edwards, who won nationwide praise and sympathy as he campaigned side-by-side with his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, admitted in shame Friday he had had an extramarital affair with a woman who produced videos for his campaign.

Edwards 'Fesses Up to AffairAP John Edwards admitted Friday that he had an affair with Rielle Hunter, while his wife was battling cancer. The former Democratic presidential candidate told ABC News that he lied repeatedly about his relationship with Hunter, a 42-year-old filmmaker. Acknowledging a sex scandal he had dismissed as "tabloid trash" only last month, Edwards said he had told his wife and family long ago but "I had hoped that it would never become public."

He denied fathering a daughter, born to the woman with whom he had the affair, and offered to be tested to prove it. A former Edwards campaign staff member professes to be the father.

The former North Carolina senator, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, confessed to ABC News that he had lied repeatedly about the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter. Hunter's daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born on Feb. 27 this year, and no father's name is given on the birth certificate filed in California.

After the story broke Friday, Edwards released a statement that said, "In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake, and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public." "With my family, I took responsibility for my actions in 2006, and today I take full responsibility publicly."

Edwards declared his presidential candidacy in December 2006. His wife was at his side that day and campaigned enthusiastically with him and by herself in the months that followed. She announced in March 2007 that her cancer, formerly in remission, had returned and there apparently was no cure.
She and her husband said it was important for the campaign to continue.
Edwards dropped out midway through this year's primaries after it became apparent he could not keep up with front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He recently endorsed Obama and has been mentioned as a possible running mate.

He was John Kerry's running mate in 2004 when Kerry lost to President Bush.
In his statement, he said, "It is inadequate to say to the people who believed in me that I am sorry, as it is inadequate to say to the people who love me that I am sorry.

"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help."

The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, in the run-up to the Democratic primaries, and Edwards denied it.
"The story is false," he told reporters then. "It's completely untrue, ridiculous." He professed his love for his wife, who had an incurable form of cancer, saying, "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and as anybody who's been around us knows, she's an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known. So the story's just false."

Last month, the Enquirer carried another story stating that its reporters had accosted Edwards in a Los Angeles hotel where he had met with Hunter after her child's birth. Edwards called it "tabloid trash," but he generally avoided reporters' inquiries, as did his former top aides.

In an interview, scheduled to air on ABC News' "Nightline" Friday night, Edwards said the tabloid was correct when it reported on his meeting with Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month.

A number of mainstream news organizations had looked into the adultery allegations but had not published or aired stories. But newspapers in Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., recounted the Enquirer's allegations in prominent articles on Thursday.

The Edwardses have three children — Cate, Jack and Emma Claire. Another son, Wade, died at 16 in a 1996 car accident.

David Bonior, Edwards' campaign manager for his 2008 presidential bid, said he was disappointed and angry at Friday's news.

"Thousands of friends of the senator's and his supporters have put their faith and confidence in him, and he's let them down," said Bonior, a former congressman from Michigan. "They've been betrayed by his action."
Asked whether the affair would damage Edwards' future aspirations in public service, Bonior replied: "You can't lie in politics and expect to have people's confidence."

In 1999, when Edwards was a senator, he said of President Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky:

"I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."

In 2006, Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 in a four-month span to a newly formed firm run by Hunter, who directed the production of four Web videos showing Edwards in supposedly candid moments as well as in a public speech talking about morality.

The payments from Edwards' One America Committee to Midline Groove Productions LLC started on July 5, 2006, five days after Hunter incorporated the firm in Delaware.

Midline provided "Website/Internet services," according to reports that Edwards' PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Midline's work product consists of four YouTube videos showing Edwards in informal settings as he prepares to make speeches in Storm Lake, Iowa, and Pittsburgh, as he prepares for an appearance on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and travels in Uganda in 2006.

Edwards' PAC followed the six-figure payment with two smaller payments totaling $14,461, the last on April 1, 2007.

At the time Hunter was compiling the videos in 2006, Edwards was preparing his run for president.

Episode One of the four videos shows a conversation between Edwards and an unseen woman as the two chat aboard a plane about an upcoming speech in Storm Lake, Iowa.

Cutting between clips of the speech and the conversation with the woman, Edwards touches on his standard political themes, declaring that government must do a better job of addressing the great issues of the day, from poverty and education to jobs and the war in Iraq.

"I want to see our party lead on the great moral issues — yes, me a Democrat using that word — the great moral issues that face our country," Edwards tells the crowd. "If we want to live in a moral, honest just America and if we want to live in a moral and just world, we can't wait for somebody else to do it. We have to do it."

[Tara]

Lisa,

I also think this scandal will probably put an end to John Edwards career. He's always talking about morality, and he now looks like a hypocrite. He's a report from Politicker.com:

The End of John Edwards
by Steve Kornacki | August 8, 2008 |

In the three national campaigns he has run - two for the Democratic presidential nomination and one as the party's vice presidential nominee - John Edwards won a grand total of one contest -- the South Carolina primary in 2004. But amazingly, he managed to emerge from each losing effort with his political standing not only unharmed, but actually enhanced.

His 2004 primary bid, which peaked with his strong second-place showing in the lead-off Iowa caucuses, ended with wide agreement among activists and party leaders that his Southern roots, working-class appeal, and powerful communication skills would make him the ideal running mate for John Kerry, who finally gave in and offered Edwards his No. 2 slot. And when the Kerry-Edwards ticket went down to defeat in November - a loss that may have been aided by Edwards' inexplicably underwhelming performance in his debate against Dick Cheney - Edwards largely got a pass, with many in the party arguing that the outcome would have been different if the ticket had simply been reversed. And then there was this year's Democratic race, in which Edwards again reached his zenith in Iowa but exited the race a hero to the netroots and the clear choice of many activists for the V.P. slot or a prominent role (Attorney General?) in a Democratic administration next year.

Now, though, the National Enquirer, whose initial report last December set about the chain of events that produced Edwards' admission on Friday of an extramarital affair, has done what three failed national campaigns couldn't by ending Edwards' future in national politics. The catch is: Edwards doesn't seem to realize it yet.

In a statement released late Friday afternoon, hours before a pre-taped interview with ABC News was scheduled to air, Edwards copped to an affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker and former campaign worker, "for a short period in 2006" but denied that he had fathered her child, something the Enquirer first alleged last December. His lengthy statement, though, feels far more political than confessional.

Most notably, Edwards characterized his previous responses to the Enquirer's reporting - which have generally involved him sneering at reporters who have asked about it and branding the allegations "tabloid trash" - as "99 percent honest." His own top supporters don't seem to agree, David Bonior, the former House Democratic Whip who managed the Edwards campaign this year, was quoted saying his boss had "betrayed" those who supported him.

It's certainly true that sex scandals aren't the automatic political career-killers that they used to be. Case in point: Bill Clinton, who denied his affair with Monica Lewinsky with the same straight-faced fervor that Edwards mustered to shoot down the Enquirer's story. But that doesn't mean they still can't be deadly, as Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey and Larry Craig can all attest. Determining whether a scandal is fatal is much more an art than a science.

Just consider the very similar cases of Spitzer and David Vitter, both of whom acknowledged paying prostitutes for sex. The factual differences between their cases were technical (Spitzer's prostitute had crossed state lines to join him, a violation of an obscure and rarely-invoked federal statute, while Vitter's hadn't) but morally, their crimes were equal. While the clamor for Spitzer to resign was immediate, universal and overwhelming, Vitter was able to wait the firestorm out and then return to his day-to-day life as a U.S. Senator.

Similarly, Edwards - as long as his denial about fathering Hunter's child is truthful - is guilty of the same moral crime as Clinton, committing adultery and then lying about it. But for subjective reasons, Edwards will almost certainly pay a much higher price than Clinton.

One difference is that when the Lewinsky scandal broke, the public was already predisposed to view Clinton as a playboy. From the day the Gennifer Flowers scandal broke in the 1992 campaign, Clinton's image as smooth-talking good ol' boy with an eye for the ladies became fixed in popular culture. The Lewinsky scandal may have caught voters by surprise, but Clinton's conduct was entirely consistent with their longstanding assessment of him and his character.

Jokes about Edwards' sexual appetite, by contrast, have never been a staple of late-night comedy. That he'd cheat on his wife is a revelation to most voters. Moreover, the Edwardses, unlike the Clintons (who always acknowledged that their marriage had been rocky), have actively promoted their supposedly blissful partnership. And Edwards' own message, very much unlike Clinton's, is heavily tinged with morality. Like a modern-day William Jennings Bryan, he turned his campaigns (especially this year's) into moral crusades, linking his commitment to the poor, downtrodden and forgotten to his Christian faith (and also often noting that his faith had made it a struggle for him to support gay rights). While Edwards hasn't advocated sexual Puritanism, his holier-than-thou tone opens him to charges of hypocrisy.

There are other reasons to believe that he is done politically. Lying so convincingly for the past eight months lends lasting credibility to the charge that Edwards is little more than a packaged, silver-tongued trial lawyer. Plus, his willingness to let his top aides and supporters speak up in his defense reflects horribly on his character. Clinton had an ineffable warmth that prompted many people to overlook similar conduct. Edwards, as articulate as he is, simply doesn't have the same ability.

And then there's the issue of Elizabeth Edwards. In his statement, Edwards suggested that he had already confessed the affair to his wife and that she had forgiven him - long before the Enquirer story broke, and before her breast cancer returned early last year. Perhaps she will back him up on this publicly, and perhaps she won't. It really doesn't matter. Even before this scandal, she had become one of the more sympathetic figures on the national stage, widely admired for the grace and resolve she has shown in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis. Even if she publicly forgives him, Edwards will long be haunted by the perception that he betrayed his cancer-stricken wife.

One of his major strengths (at least within the Democratic Party) was always his perceived electability. That is now gone.

In the immediate future, the talk of Edwards as attorney general in an Obama administration is dead - not because the Senate would reject his nomination, but simply because no incoming president would willingly bring upon himself the media firestorm that would attend an Edwards appointment. Longer term, any return to politics in North Carolina, where Democrats have to be near-perfect simply to have a chance at winning, seems out of the question.

Edwards' political appeal was rooted in his ability to turn a policy matter into a moral issue and to rouse his audience into action. That's all gone now.

[Lenin]

It's NOT a sex scandal. It's a man having more sex than his marriage.

All powerful political figures have had mistresses...FDR, Eisenhoer, Kennedy and LBJ come to mind...oh and Clinton and probaly both Bushes.

I think a politician who takes a bribe or steals money should be tried and SHOT but a politician who has a mistress on the side should be allowed his privacy.


We don't vote for SAINTS (without penises) when we vote for Senators.

Who CARES whether he is screwing other women, other MEN, animals, or RUTABAGAS with a cored hole? He was elected by his constituency to deliver good VOTES, not achieve sainthood.

If he resigns his Senate seat, he and his party are acting COWARDLY.

Take a lesson from the GOP with a Senator who still holds his seat in spite of throbbing contact with a cop in a toilet. SEX DOES NOT MATTER!

[247.5]

What real man cheats on his wife who has cancer.

Please inform of us of extra the marital affairs of GWB, GHWB etc.

Whats next Ronald Reagan had a mistress?

Democrats lol

[Lenin]

Whats next Ronald Reagan had a mistress?

Nope, safe on that one. By the time RayGun was sworn in his Alzheimer's was too progressed for any degree of sexual prowess...all he had was Mommie Nancy to wipe his bottom.

As for the Bushes...has ANYONE escaped being f****ed by them?

[247.5]

Way to talk down the man who defeated the soviets and ended the cold war.

Bravo. My friend

I just cant wait until Obama is back in his senate seat where he belongs.




just look at Clinton.


this is all bad bad bad

You could have had Hillary now you are stuck with Obama Doofus.

Democrats never lose to Republicans they lose to themselves.
the whole thing is just imploding.

Its over allready.