EDWARDS: NOT A BOLDFACE NAME

Edwards is dropping out? Well, once the race included both Obama and Clinton, Edwards never had a chance, any more than, say, Biden or Richardson did. For the press, Clinton/Obama is about celebrity, sizzle, heat; Edwards was once on a national ticket, so he wasn't quite put in the Boring Nobody category with Richardson and Biden, but he was treated like a guy whose category's award was given out at a separate ceremony earlier this afternoon. Obviously, the well-to-do elitists in the political press never wanted to take seriously a guy who has a left-wing critique of turbocapitalism, but keeping him off the front pages was made infinitely easier when they realized they could focus exclusively on Clinton vs. Obama as a red-carpet catfight and turn their coverage of the Democratic race into PerezHilton.gov. And now, with Talk-Show Couch McCain as the inevitable GOP nominee, it's going to be all People magazine from here on in (with McCain, however, portrayed as the ordinary guy who had celebrity thrust upon him by the Viet Cong)....