Elizabeth Edwards’ Statement On John Edwards’ Affair

Elizabeth Edwards has written a diary on Daily Kos in which she addresses the political bombshell news that her husband John Edwards has now admitted to lying about an affair when he was running for the Democratic Presidential nomination in the primaries.

It begins this way:

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.

The pain of the long journey since 2006 was about to be renewed.

Read the rest of it.

No matter how it finally shapes up in terms of the solid facts of this case, one thing is clear: this family has truly suffered over the years….and on so many levels.

Elizabeth Edwards developed a large following during the campaign, and not related to her illness. It’s clear that when she takes the podium at the Democratic convention, she’ll be greeted by thunderous applause for several reasons.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder reports that neither Edwards is expected to attend the Democratic convention.