In his new autobimemoir of the '08 campaign trail, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe recounts an amazingly gracious offer from the Edwards campaign…

"Listen. It's clear unless the race is shaken up, Hillary is going to win. You guys might not even win South Carolina. What would shake the race up is John ending his campaign, but not simply to endorse another candidate. All things being equal, John prefers Barack. They should announce they are joining forces and will run as a ticket. Edwards can vouch for Obama with blue-collar and Southern whites and is running on a change message.

"It's a perfect fit. And it has to be something that big to slow down Hillary. You need a big shakeup in the race and this could be it."

And he had the perfect big shakeup just waiting to be shooken up, didn't he?.

Ah, what could have been.

So Indecision asked me to write a list of women who have had infamous sexual relationships with political figures.
“Oh, like political mistresses?" I asked.
“No. More like Secret Girlfriends,” they replied.
“Secret Girlfriends? What? Why would you call them that?”
“Oh, no reason.”

#7 – William Rufus King
Senator from Alabama, Vice President under Franklin Pierce, and according to some, President James Buchanan’s lover. “Where’s my proof,” you ask? To which I reply, “Proof? Really? This is the internet.” In any event, Buchanan was our nation’s only bachelor President and he did live with King for quite some time. Need more? Well, apparently Andrew Jackson used to refer to King as “Miss Nancy.” So there’s that. Although I must confess that even in the 1800’s “Miss Nancy” seems like a pretty weak slam on a guy you’re trying to paint as gay. Is that really the best Old Hickory could do? More like “Old Dickory,” amirite? See what I mean?

# 6 – Monica Lewinsky
No list of secret girlfriends would be complete without Monica Lewinsky, but as someone who was cognizant of political humor in the 90s I don’t know what I can say about it now. Every cigar-inserting, dress-staining, fat-girls-give-good-oral joke has already been made a hundred times. I just don’t want to go there. And it’s not just because there’s a chance I might bump into Monica at synagogue. It’s because I lost my virginity to her. Yesterday. What? Don’t look at me!

#5 – Callista Bisek
You might not recognize her name, but Ms. Bisek is the woman House Speaker Gingrich was showing his little newt to while simultaneously leading the charge against President Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal. And don’t get your hopes up that Bisek was some double agent hoping to expose Gingrich’s family values hypocrisy. Bisek actually married him. But that might just be because "Mrs. Gingrich" has a nicer ring to it than "Newt-Fucker."

#4 – Rielle Hunter
Say what you want about John Edwards, but he sure had sex with another woman while his wife was battling cancer. And that woman was Rielle Hunter. You might know her as the woman John Edwards said he didn’t have sex with. Others of you might recall her as the woman he later admitted to having sex with. I’m still not sure whether or not her baby is his. Did we get confirmation on that? In any event, I do know one thing. That affair ended those rumors about him being gay. Oh, and his political career.

#3 – Ashley Dupre
Now, I’m not sure if you can really refer to a prostitute as a “girlfriend,” but I just couldn’t make this list without Elliot Spitzer’s dangerous-sex-for-money-girl, Ashley Dupre. Why go to a pro? I’m guessing Eliot liked to play certain games reserved strictly for professionals. Role play scenarios like “you be the embezzling Enron exec and I’ll be the minority shareholder who gets screwed over by your dirty dealings. Your dirty, dirty dealings. Inflate assets! Hide the debt! Golden parachute, mmmmmmmmmmmmm….”

#2 – Marilyn Monroe
How can the most famous woman in the world be a secret girlfriend? I’d tell you, but then I might ruin the good thing I have going with Queen Elizabeth. Much has been made about JFK’s alleged trysts with the blonde bombshell, but Marilyn’s greatest contribution to the study of secret girlfriends might be in establishing the high water mark for my theory: “The Ever Decreasing Slope of Presidential Tail.” As exhibited by this chart, applying my theory (with a sample group of two) we can predict, with no chance of error, that Barack Obama will reveal his secret girlfriend to be Paula Abdul some time in late 2010.

#1 – Maria Belen Chapur
I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m told “Belen Chapur” means “woman so hot she can make a mildly retarded South Carolina governor disappear.” For six days in 2009, Gov. Mark Sanford went “missing” while getting some face time with his Argentinean mistress. Like in Argentina, which surprisingly is not as discrete a location as you’d think. When Sanford returned, he confessed in an overly sentimental news conference and was greeted with calls for his resignation. Still, Sanford’s fraudulent alibi for his whereabouts during those six days –“hiking the Appalachian trail”—will surely go down as one of the greatest euphemisms for nookie in the history of dirty secret sex politics.

But according to the Times, which has a copy of a book proposal written by former Edwards aide Andrew Young, the most humiliating detail of all is this: John Edwards is secretly that "sensitive" guy you dated in college…

Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

Oh, Rielle. Honey. You can't buy a line like that. Face it, that guy is just going to get wasted on Natty Light and vomit on your couch.

Anyway, now that the jig is up and the feds are involved, music fans around the world will never get a chance to hear the super-special song Daaaaave was going to compose for the Edwards-Hunter nuptials: "I Cheated on My Dying Wife and Fathered an Illegitimate Child With You Oooh Crash Into Me (Harmonica Solo)." Such a loss.

* The Onion: Congress Deadlocked on How Not to Provide Health Care.

* Please don't let the idiot train leave for health care protest town without Michele Bachmann! She's a'comin'!

* Sen. Max Baucus is under attack from the YouTubes.

* Barack Obama's mother-in-law practices Santeria, but she ain't got no crystal ball.

* John Edwards is moving his little bundle of political irrelevancy closer to home.

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See also:

Thanks for the reminder, Daily News, plus visuals…

Former John Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal.

While he was unpacking, Young discovered a videocassette, according to the book pitch. Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.

Well, that's kind of a letdown.

Nothing's hotter than two consenting adults trying to achieve universal health care by creating regional "Health Care Markets" to let every American share the bargaining power to purchase an affordable, high-quality health plan, increase choices among insurance plans and cut costs for businesses offering insurance. Rrrrowwwrrrr.

But, since I've got a job, I usually just end up reading bullshit unfounded speculation on the Internet instead…

[If John Edwards had not run for president] Could Hillary Clinton have grabbed Edwards' loyalists and won early, stage-setting contests in Iowa, where Barack Obama emerged as a contender with a stunning win, or later, in the South Carolina primary?

Yes, says Mark Penn, Clinton's close campaign adviser and pollster. Penn has asserted that without Edwards on the ballot, voters would have taken a "fresh look" at Clinton.

Well, if Mark Penn says it, it must be true. Why, he's never proven himself to be wrong-headed, duplicitous or willfully ignorant before. That guy is a straight shooter if ever I did see one.

But, just for the sake of adding length to this post, let's see what somebody who knows what he's talking about has to say. What does Mark Blumenthal from Pollster.com have to say about it?

Mark Blumenthal from Pollster.com: "The most compelling evidence concerns where Edwards' support might have gone, had he withdrawn once the campaign had gotten under way in early 2007: polls showing that Edwards supporters preferred Obama to Clinton as their second choice in Iowa (as early as May 2007) and in New Hampshire (a few days before the primary)…

"Edwards started the race as the leading candidate in Iowa. Had Edwards withdrawn in late 2006, others who were considering the race at about that time — Tom Vilsack, Evan Bayh, Mark Warner — might have gotten in."

Yeah. Edwards' campaign was the only thing standing between Evan Bayh and the White House.

He must be very bitter.

Not really because John Edwards was a white guy — which was just soooo 2004 — but because of that whole cheating on his wife thing — which was soooo 1999…

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.

Thank god somebody was prepared to do the scuzzy thing if it came down to it. I guess that's what makes them good cogs in the D.C. machine.

Hey, didn't they used to have a guy who did that?

Global poverty "is not an economic issue," former Senator John Edwards told a full [Brown University lecture hall] last night. "It's a moral issue."

DO GO ON.

Speaking of the need to confront poverty in the developing world and to protect the environment, Edwards called on the United States to "lead aggressively, not cautiously." [...]

Edwards, who cancelled a fall speaking engagement here after admitting to his involvement in an extramarital affair, titled last night's lecture "Beautiful America."

Indeed.

Well, he's the expert.