WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrats moved Saturday to staunch the damage after one-time party star and presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted having an affair during his White House run as his wife battled cancer.
With the party's national convention to officially crown Senator Barack Obama as its White House candidate just over two weeks away, Democrats sought to minimize the scandal as a personal matter for the Edwards family.
"We have unrealistic expectations for people. John Edwards like the rest of us is only human," said Howard Wolfson, a former senior official for the rival presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
"The truth is a lot of ordinary, average Americans have affairs," Wolfson told Fox News.
Edwards, a North Carolina senator before he joined the presidential race in 2004, went public with his long-rumored affair on ABC television late Friday, conceding that it went on as he prepared his White House run and while his wife was being treated for breast cancer.
Edwards, 54, apologized profusely, admitting that life on the campaign trail had made him "increasingly egocentric and narcissistic."
He denied, however, fathering the six-month-old baby of 42-year-old filmmaker Rielle Hunter, although according to reports Saturday her family is seeking a paternity test from Edwards.
Edwards is married to Elizabeth Edwards, a popular figure due to her courageous fight against her cancer, which has been judged by doctors to be incurable since it returned in 2007.
She wrote on the Daily Kos website that her husband told her in 2006 of the affair, saying that it had been painful but that it was a private issue.
Asked on Fox News late Friday if Edwards' televised confession was bad news for the Democrats, former presidential candidate George McGovern, replied "I don't think so at all."
"We've got one of the ablest candidates ever nominated, and he's running against a man who really pretty much promises more of the same of what we've had the last eight years," said McGovern, one of the party's most venerated figures.
"I think it's entirely up to Senator Edwards and his wife, and the rest of us should keep quiet."
Obama, on a week-long holiday in Hawaii, praised Edwards as "a great champion of working people."
But he and others said that Edwards, who was Senator John Kerry's running mate in their failed 2004 White House bid, was no longer likely to address the party convention in the wake of his admission.
"The Edwards family indicated that they probably wouldn't be attending the convention," Obama told reporters.
"This is a difficult and painful time for them and I think they need to work through that process of healing," he said, adding that "many of his themes are ones that Democrats as a whole share, those will be amplified in the convention."
It was not clear whether the Edwards affair would be used by Republicans to attack Obama, who was given a ringing endorsement by Edwards in May.
Perhaps mindful that Republican candidate John McCain himself had an affair with his current wife while married to another woman in the late 1970s, Republicans on Saturday remained silent on the issue.
Analysts said Edwards had disappointed many supporters and that his political career was on ice for the meantime but not permanently finished.
"Obviously a lot of people believed in John Edwards, people were passionate about his candidacy... I think there are people who feel let down when you invest that much time and energy in a candidate and the candidate turns out to be less than you thought," Wolfson told Fox.
Republican strategist Dan Schnur told the Washington Post that Edwards could pursue a comeback in four to eight years.
"The American public has become sensitized to this type of behavior from political leaders," he said.
But David Bonior, who managed Edwards' 2007-2008 presidential campaign, angrily told the New York Times: "He should get off the political stage."
"Our staff put their faith and confidence in him, and he let them down."
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