BREAKING: John Edwards Will Continue Campaign Despite Wife’s Revived Cancer (REVISED)
March 22nd, 2007
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
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EDITOR’s NOTE: We just posted a post about the two news reports announcing Democrat John Edwards would suspend his campaign. The Politico (one of the reports we cited) now has THIS POST about getting it wrong. But at the press conference Edwards announced that the campaign will go on. Here’s the latest at the top of this report AND we left the OUTDATED portion for you at the end when you click on the READ MORE option.
Democrat John Edwards campaign will go on after all, despite a reoccurance of his wife’s breast cancer. CNN reports:
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday his wife’s cancer has returned but his bid for the White House will go on.“The campaign goes on,” John Edwards said at a news conference outside the couple’s home, contradicting earlier media reports to the contrary.
John Edwards said tests this week had shown his wife, Elizabeth, had cancer in a rib on her right side. He said the cancer is treatable but not curable.
“We are very optimistic about this,” he said, noting that the tumor is small in size and has a “relatively minimal presence.”
Elizabeth Edwards said she was “incredibly optimistic” and said her expectations about the future were unchanged.
“You can go cower in the corner and hide or you can go out there and stand up for what you believe in,” John Edwards said. “We have no intentions of cowering in the corner.”
Elizabeth Edwards said she was fortunate that she felt pain from a cracked rib and got X-rays for that which revealed the cancer.
Elizabeth Edwards underwent treatment for breast cancer after the 2004 campaign, in which her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Elizabeth Edwards’ breast cancer, invasive ductal cancer, is the most common form of the disease, accounting for 70 percent to 80 percent of cases, according to the American Cancer Society.
Two earlier reports in advance of this news conference reported that Edwards would suspend his campaign. Here is our earlier post, which was overtaken very quickly by events:
This report was quickly oudated:
Democrat John Edwards is suspending his campaign for the presidency due and may drop out completely because his wife has suffered a recurrence of cancer, sources said Thursday.
“For him right now he has one priority which is her health and the security of the two young children,” said the friend.As for the campaign, “You don’t shut this machine off completely, but everything will go on hold.”
The Politico also had pro forma denial from the Edwards campaign about the suspension of activities. However, a candidate doesn’t cancel a campaign event and call a special press conference with his wife if there is no change in a situation. And “suspension,” in terms of the political realities of what it takes to plan, implement and fund a Presidential campaign in 2006 for 2008 means that it’s more likely than not that the Edwards campaign could come to an end.
NOTE: Clearly, we were wrong about what the press conference meant. It’ll be interesting to see in coming days what went into the decision and how it was made.
UPDATE: At The Politico, Ben Smith’s blog apologized for giving readers wrong information. The link is in our intro to this post. Here’s the bulk of the post:
A single, confident source close to John Edwards told me this morning that Edwards was “suspending his campaign,” and I posted it to the blog at 11:06 this morning.My source, and I, were wrong.
The source, whose anonymity I agreed to respect, spoke of the kind of grim prognosis Elizabeth Edwards herself just described hearing before a second round of tests came back. I trusted the source, somebody I’ve known for several years, and who has always been reliable.
And with less than an hour before Edwards was to announce, I unwisely wrote the item without getting a second source.
When the campaign pushed back harder than I’d expected, I added that information to the original item, but that doesn’t undo the damage.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under Democrats, John Edwards, Health, Breaking News, 2008 Elections, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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