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(AP) - Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race
for the White House on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside
"so that history can blaze its path" in a campaign now left to
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

      "With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back
the White House in November," said Edwards, ending his second
campaign in a hurricane-ravaged section of New Orleans where he
began it more than a year ago.

      Edwards said Clinton and Obama had both pledged that "they will
make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency."

      "This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment
to engage in this cause," he said before a small group of
supporters.

      Edwards said that on his way to make his campaign-ending
statement, he drove by a highway underpass where several homeless
people live. He stopped to talk, he said, and as he was leaving,
one of them asked him never to forget them and their plight.


      "I'll never forget you," he said, pledging to continue his
campaign-long effort to end what he frequently said was "two
Americas," one for the powerful, the other for the rest.

      The former North Carolina senator did not immediately endorse
either Clinton, seeking to become the first female president, or
Obama, the strongest black candidate in history.

      Both of them praised Edwards - and immediately began courting
his supporters.

      "John Edwards ended his campaign today in the same way he
started it -- by standing with the people who are too often left
behind and nearly always left out of our national debate," Clinton
said.

      Obama, too, praised Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth. At a rally
in Denver, he said the couple has "always believed deeply that two
Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around
this common purpose," Obama said. "So while his campaign may have
ended, this cause lives on for all of us who still believe that we
can achieve that dream of one America."

      The impact of Edwards' decision will be felt in one week's time,
when Democrats hold primaries and caucuses across 22 states, with
1,681 delegates at stake.

 Four in 10 Edwards supporters said their second choice in the
race is Clinton, while a quarter prefer Obama, according to an
Associated Press-Yahoo poll conducted late this month.

      Edwards amassed 56 national convention delegates, most of whom
will be free to support either Obama or Clinton.

      As expected, Edwards said he was suspending his campaign rather
than ending it, but aides said that was simply legal terminology so
that he can continue to receive federal matching funds for his
campaign donations.

      An immediate impact of Edwards' withdrawal will be six
additional delegates for Obama, giving him a total of 187, and four
more for Clinton, giving her 253. A total of 2,025 delegates are
needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

      Edwards won 26 delegates in the Iowa, New Hampshire and South
Carolina contests. Under party rules, 10 of those delegates will be
automatically dispersed among Obama and Clinton, based on their
vote totals in those respective contests. The remaining 16 remain
pledged to Edwards, meaning his campaign will have a say in naming
them.

      Three superdelegates - mainly party and elected officials who
automatically attend the convention and can support whomever they
choose - had already switched from Edwards to Obama before news of
Edwards' withdrawal from the race.

      Edwards waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two
better-funded rivals, even as he dealt with the stunning blow of
his wife's recurring cancer diagnosis. In a dramatic news
conference last March, the couple announced that the breast cancer
that she thought she had beaten had returned, but they would
continue the campaign.

      Their decision sparked a debate about family duty and public
service. But Elizabeth Edwards remained a forceful advocate for her
husband, and she was often surrounded at campaign events by
well-wishers and emotional survivors cheering her on.

      Edwards announce his campaign was ending with his wife and three
children at his side. Then he planned to work with Habitat for
Humanity at the volunteer-fueled rebuilding project Musicians'
Village, his campaign said.

      With that, Edwards' campaign ended the way it began 13 months
ago - with the candidate pitching in to rebuild lives in a city
still ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards embraced New Orleans as
a glaring symbol of what he described as a Washington that didn't
hear the cries of the downtrodden.


      Edwards burst out of the starting gate with a flurry of
progressive policy ideas - he was the first to offer a plan for
universal health care, the first to call on Congress to pull
funding for the war, and he led the charge that lobbyists have too
much power in Washington and need to be reigned in.

      The ideas were all bold and new for Edwards personally as well,
making him a different candidate than the moderate Southerner who
ran in 2004 while still in his first Senate term. 

But the themes
were eventually adopted by other Democratic presidential candidates
- and even a Republican, Mitt Romney, echoed the call for an end to
special interest politics in Washington.

      Edwards' rise to prominence in politics came amid just one term
representing North Carolina in the Senate after a career as a trial
attorney that made him millions. He was on Al Gore's short list for
vice president in 2000 after serving just two years in office. He
ran for president in 2004, and after he lost to John Kerry, the
nominee picked him as a running mate.

      Elizabeth Edwards first discovered a lump in her breast in the
final days of that losing campaign. Her battle against the disease
caused her husband to open up about another tragedy in their lives
- the death of their teenage son Wade in a 1996 car accident. 

The
candidate barely spoke of Wade during his 2004 campaign, but he
offered his son's death to answer questions about how he could
persevere when his wife could die.

      Even as Obama and Clinton collected astonishing amounts of money
that dwarfed his fundraising effort, Edwards maintained a loyal
following in the first voting state of Iowa that made him a serious
contender. 

He came in second to Obama in Iowa, an impressive feat
of relegating Clinton to third place, before coming in third in the
following three contests.

      The loss in South Carolina was especially hard because it was
where he was born and he had won the state in 2004.
            

Gallery

Giuliani to drop out of Republican presidential race, back McCain

From Florida to Super Tuesday

Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race
for the White House on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside
"so that history can blaze its path" in a campaign now left to
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Edwards ends bid for White House

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