Small wonder polls say 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction the country is going -- neither political party adequately represents the beliefs of their constituents anymore.  As Victor Davis Hansen points out in a recent article for example, it's hard to find an old fashioned Democrat anymore, especially in places like California.  Sure, Hillary Clinton rooted around the rust belt and rallied the the surviving remnants of these dinosaur Democrats.  But, alas, they no longer matter.  Her belated reincarnation as a common man of the people will not derail Obama on his way to deification in Denver.  Her cause and that of her new found supporters is lost.  Note that after Obama's defeat in Pennsylvania, his campaign manager essentially disowned this segment of Democrats who voted for Hillary, calling them unnecessary for a win in November.  He may be right.  Probably half of those traditional PA Democrats will eventually hold their nose and vote for Obama, and the rest will do the same for McCain.  Either way they no longer have a Party to call home.
     
John Edwards knows this.  Reading the tea leaves (or the entrails) of his Party, he has now cast his lot with Obama, thereby abandoning all pretense of being the champion of the little guy and the working poor.  I'm sure for the multi-millionaire lawyer this comes as a relief, as his southern poor boy persona was a tiresome charade anyway.  And the real down home country types all recognized a con when they saw one.  Fittingly, his endorsement of Obama comes only after the Senator from Illinois has conclusively shown he has little support among the segment of Democrats that Edwards previously courted and lost.  Oh, and remember his Two Americas?  If you want a perfect example of that notion, look at the split in the Democratic Party:  well-to-do liberals and their college age brood vs. blue collar working class joes.  Guess we now know where ol' Johnboy's loyalties truly lie.  Fightin' for the little guy only makes sense if you get rich or get elected. 

And so the Party of the People is about to veer left and completely disown its historic roots (working class people of the wrong color) in favor of a junior Senator with no leadership experience who talks the talk.  How did this happen?  My pet theory is a couple of years ago the billionaire socialists --yes, it's an oxymoron-- in the Democratic Party had a focus group session where everyone got high, pulled out their laptops and designed the perfect liberal candidate.  The result was a biracial man, raised mostly outside of the mainland US by a strong willed single mom who had a PhD in Anthropology and worked in the third world.  He was given a golden tongue, good looks and, critically (because he's male) a non-confrontational demeanor.  He was educated at all the "best" schools and had the most progressive advisors.  As unions were either defunct or contaminated with more plebian minded Democrats, he worked as a community organizer in an African-American neighborhood where he learned to speak the local patois.  After spending five years with the common folk he was sent to re-education camp at Harvard Law School.  He subsequently married a strong willed black woman of equal physical stature and professional credentials.  Naturally, they had two daughters and baptized them in the church of Black Liberation Theology.  The perfect liberal candidate would be introduced to the political world by a couple of unregenerate 60's radicals, sort of a passing of the mantle.  At this point in their collective hallucination, the focus group began to chant and rubbed real hard on an Evian water bottle.  Out popped a genie who granted them their wish, conjuring up Barack Obama.   The money flowed like honey and the rest is history.   I mean, the rest of the Democratic Party is history.