Edwards' wife criticized for silence on affair

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-26 17:51

RALEIGH, North Carolina -- Two weeks after a devastating revelation sent her husband into political exile, Elizabeth Edwards isn't getting the steady sympathy usually afforded to a woman scorned.

Former US Democratic Presidential candidate and former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) campaigns with his wife Elizabeth at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa in this file photo from January 1, 2008. Edwards has admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a woman he met in a New York City bar in 2006, ABC News reported on August 8, 2008. [Agencies]

Instead, she's faced criticism from dedicated Democrats who think she was too willing to keep the affair a secret to help John Edwards' political ambitions, as well as her own.

At a time when she was expected to hold a prominent role in pushing an agenda of improved health care for Americans, she stands silent. While fellow Democrats converge in Denver to nominate Barack Obama for president, Edwards remains in seclusion in North Carolina.

It seems an odd way to treat a woman with incurable cancer wronged by a cheating husband, the latest in a series of deep hardships in life that includes the death of a teenage son.

But some former followers have questioned the recklessness of keeping the affair under wraps even though her husband, a former US senator, two-time presidential candidate and the 2004 vice presidential nominee, said he confessed the affair in 2006, before the campaign began in earnest the next year.

"I think she's complicit," said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant. "Obviously, she knew. While she's the victim, she clearly didn't stand in the way of the cover-up."

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