Edwards' endorsement an easy call. Now what?

Back on Feb. 20 I posted Edwards To Endorse Obama. Here's part of that post, followed by some "now what?" below the star line.

It's an easy call.

Durham, NC's " progressive weekly," The Independent, has just posted:

Obama's coffers fill with checks from Edwards' donors

High-dollar donors, including former adviser and law partner, get behind Barack

Under Mosi Secret's byline, the Indy begins:

John Edwards may have yet to give his official endorsement to either of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, but his prominent local supporters—and their wallets—are lining up behind U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in his bid to secure the nomination.

This week, Triangle supporters who commit to raising at least $10,000 for Obama will meet with Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe at a lunch organized by Tim Toben, Edwards' former environmental adviser and a major Edwards fundraiser. ...

The Feb. 21 event will be hosted by the Raleigh law firm Kirby & Holt, where Edwards' former law partner and close friend from law school, David Kirby, is an attorney.

Employees at the firm have given almost $27,000 to the Edwards campaign in the 2008 election cycle, according to federal campaign finance reports.

...

[Edwards] donors seem to be shifting allegiances to Obama en masse, as well as tapping their networks to solicit contributions for him.

"All the people that I called were people in my former life that I called for Edwards and they are saying yes," Stein says.

Obama is also courting Edwards' endorsement. He visited the former senator at his Chapel Hill home Feb. 17. (emphasis added)

Here's the rest of the Indy story.

Folks, I go with most everything in the story except: "Obama is also courting Edwards' endorsement."

Obama already has that privately, otherwise John Edwards' closest friends and supporters wouldn't be doing what they're doing.

Obama's visit to Edwards' home - just a few miles and a $5 million tax assessment away from my home - wasn't about "courting" an endorsement. It was about "working out the details."

Obama no doubt wanted to know what Edwards and his people were willing to do for him.

The Indy story provides some of the answer.

Edwards no doubt was looking to the future and a chance to do more "poverty fighting."

The rest of the Feb. 20 post is here.
**************************************************************

OK, folks, it's now May 14 and we're seeing today the public playing out of an endorsement I feel sure was confirmed when Sen. Obama and former Sen. Edwards met in Chapel Hill in February.

If Obama had Edwards' endorsement since then, what does Edwards' public endorsement at this time tell us?

The most obvious answer is Obama's campaign staff knows Team MSM-Obama will use it to "change the story" from the results of West Virginia's primary to the "inevitability of Obama's nomination."

We can all understand why they'd want to do that: Obama lost WV by 41%.

We can also all understand why Barack and John embraced at a rally in Michigan tonight at about 6:45 PM ET.

That was so the network news programs could carry it live in the East and script "the story" as "Sen. Obama is cheered by blue-collar workers as former Sen. John Edwards, whose poverty fighting campaign ...."

West Virginia? What West Virginia?

Edwards' endorsement is tonight's story.

Now what about tomorrow? How do you keep West Virginia off the front page then?

Well, the Edwards endorsement story will continue with Team MSM-Obama cluck-clucking about all the help Edwards will give Obama with "blue collar workers Senator Obama has yet to reach."

That, and Edwards as a possible VP running-mate.

We're already hearing some of that tonight.

But I don't buy the notion that Edwards will be a big help to Obama with blue collar workers and I doubt Obama and his team will seriously consider Edwards as a VP choice, although they'll do nothing to discourage talk about it in the days to come.

Those are my thoughts about what's likely to happen next. What are yours?