Up until December of 2007, most on Edwards' staff didn't believe rumors about the affair.

But by late December, early January of last year, several people in his inner circle began to think the rumors were true.

Several of them had gotten together and devised a "doomsday" strategy of sorts.

Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards' staffers have told me.

They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

Dang. While I remain uninterested in the extramarital goings-on of anyone, it was ridiculously shortsighted and stupid for Edwards to not think there would be repercussions from his thinking with Little John. I guess we should be grateful to not have reached the point of hitting the nuclear option--that could have very likely hurt the Democrats for several election cycles.

Meanwhile, may I express some exasperation at the investigation of the money paid to Rielle Hunter by the Edwards campaign for videotaping as something critical to our democracy and yet we've known that the Bush administration lost NINE BILLION dollars in Iraq and there has been not one investigation? It's not an either/or proposition, but c'mon, there has to be some economies of scale working here when a $100K paycheck takes precedence over $9 billion.