Endorsement Deal?

John Edwards has hopped off the fence to officially endorse Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president, a move that takes the edge off Hillary Clinton's massive win in the West Virginia primary and pounds yet another nail into her candidacy's coffin. Obama now has the lead in pledged delegates, superdelegates, popular vote, states won and high-profile endorsements. He is going to win. It has actually been this way for a long time. Despite suggestions from the Clinton camp, it's no longer a contest - victory for her is a near-impossibility in mathematical terms, and the only way for her to win is to convince the superdelegates who haven't picked sides yet to go against the will of the people. And pretty much the only way that's going to happen is if Obama's photographed throwing a baby out of a high-rise window. While high-fiving Osama bin Laden and stomping on a crucifix.

Clinton keeps sticking around, though, poking holes in Obama that John McCain will hope to tear wide open in the general election campaign. Specifically, she keeps bringing up that he has trouble attracting white working-class voters. So it obviously helps to have Edwards on board, a white Southern guy whose signature issue is fighting poverty.

Edwards waited almost four months to make this move. Obama must have promised something - an increased focus on poverty, a cabinet position. But did he go so far as to whisper the words "vice president" in Edwards' ear? 

An Obama-Edwards ticket would be high on charisma, funding and dashing good looks. However, it might also skew a little too liberal. I wonder if Obama might be better off aligning himself with someone who has more pull with conservative Democrats and independents (I'm not sure who that would be - safe to say Clinton isn't likely to be asked, or likely to accept if she is).

I am curious to find out what political collateral Obama spent on the Edwards endorsement. But we won't know until Obama officially wraps things up, which should happen in the next two or three weeks.