an open letter to John Edwards

Dear Edwards Family:

The wire services tell me John will bow out of the race in a speech to be delivered mid-day today. I just chipped in another $100 last night. No news in this tumultuous political year has hit me so hard. Though you were behind in the polls all along, that says more about the nation than it does about you. I hope you will continue to stay visible to the body politic and keep opening eyes and ears to your message that the nation cannot make the much needed turn for the better until it opens its worried little heart to the conditions of its very neighbors. You did widen the debate to better include the interests of the class of citizens the Bush years have actively marginalized. I pray that breadth of political debate does not wither in your absence.

The best lives are lived in such a way that the lives of others can be a little less troubled. Your choices all along have been to live that way despite the personal sacrifices required.

A hundred dollars is not much, just ask people how far they expect to get on the desperation dollars to be doled from our nation's nest egg as a "stimulus". But the numbers of us who each put in $50 or a $100 to your campaign should have been bigger. Like I said...thats our shame, not yours. I am confident you know a dozen better things to do with that money than I do.