NEW ORLEANS (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.
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