John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.
In an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.
Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter’s baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.
Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.
A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, has said he was the father of the child.
Writing at Open Left, Mike Lux, co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, has been reading my mind:
It’s no accident that the only two Democrats to win the Presidency since 1968 were governors who were from small states, far away from DC, unaffected by the Culture of Caution that tends to grip Democrats on Capitol Hill…
My hope was that Obama would be more like JFK in that although he was a Senator, he was enough of an outsider and confident enough in himself that he was not infected by the Culture of Caution. Much of the time in the campaign he has shown that kind of confidence and strength. But I fear that, at least for the moment, the Capitol Hill Culture of Caution has taken hold of the campaign…
Instead of having the confidence to win the bigger argument on investing in alternative energy production and conservation, they make the shift on drilling. Instead of pushing back firmly and assertively on the race card accusation, they have the campaign’s reply be “No, we’re not playing the race card.” Instead of having the confidence to really negotiate with McCain on debate formats, they fell into the we’ll-just-do-what-candidates-have-always-done formats. Instead of having the confidence to lay out some of his good new ideas on foreign policy that are clearly different from the Bush doctrine in his widely watched Berlin speech, he stuck to cautious generalities. Instead of having the confidence to back up his strong and effective primary rhetoric on FISA and NAFTA, he cautiously moved towards the conventional wisdom.
John McCain has often joked that he is so popular with the corporate-owned media that he considers Beltway reporters to be his “base.” This decades-long courtship is paying off big time this year, as reporters persistently look the other way as McCain suffers one self-inflicted wound after another. Imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
A prime example of this is McCain’s performance at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last weekend. As you can see in the video above, especially starting at about 03:15, this was hands-down the most embarassing performance by a presidential candidate since Howard Dean’s purported “scream” at a rally in 2004.
What really happened to Dean, of course, was that his supporters in the room were cheering so loudly that he was yelling into a “hot” mike to be heard over the din. It was clear to most television viewers watching that night, however, that the “scream” would kill Dean’s campaign because cablenewsers would be unable to resist playing it rotation as often as possible for weeks to come. In fact, they still run it when the opportunity arises.
By contrast, other than on MSNBC shows hosted by Keith Olbermann and Dan Abrams, the video of McCain’s humiliating performance at Sturgis has barely made a blip in cable news rotations.
McCain’s campaign made an equally egregious mistake at Sturgis, as shown in the video — a little earlier than McCain’s rant, at around 02:35 — when his operatives set him up to offer his wife Cindy as a contestant in the bikers’ annual “Miss Bufffalo Chip” beauty pageant. As we reported earlier this week, the “pageant” is more like a live show produced by Hustler magazine than, certainly, Miss America.
What is important to notice in the clip is that this was not an ad lib gone wrong — McCain was reading from prepared remarks as he pimped his wife out to strip for the bikers.
Imagine how the media would have reacted if any Democratic candidate had turned in a performance as awful as McCain’s in Sturgis. And worse, imagine the reaction in the corporate media — not to mention among the howler monkeys on rightwing radio — if Barack Obama had offered his wife up for a stripper show.
The United States and Ukraine no longer seem to be in synch,
After Trump lifted Russia sanctions with a grin and a wink.
Trump coordinated it with Putin,
Who ramped up the drone shooting,
After Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.
“Take, for example, the French Revolution. Remember when Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’? Now, is that a problem of accountability and tyranny, a corrupt government? Or is it a problem of affordability and standard of living? It’s both! Authoritarianism and tyranny are extremely expensive for the people. And it’s the exact same thing when you go down the line with Donald Trump. So, are we going to go after the corruption? Yeah, you’re damn right. And are we going to go after affordability and making people’s lives easier? Yeah, you’re damn right. We’re going to do both of them.”
“Here’s the problem with the red meat: It becomes an addiction. Once you go there and you put that out there, then you’re forced to defend it. So what do they do? They double down. They triple down again.”
— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on Republicans relying on anti-Muslim attacks in the Michigan U.S. Senate race.
“If it wasn’t for President Trump the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America. He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction. He saved our border from annihilation. He saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream for ever.”
— Stephen Miller, quoted by The Guardian, pledging “total devotion” to President Trump.
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
Writing at Open Left, Mike Lux, co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies, has been 
