Edwards Camp Responds to Drudge Hillary Story

As I reported earlier today, The Drudge Report claims anonymous sources in the Clinton campaign are buzzing that she may exit the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination sooner rather than later, in anticipation of a defeat in New Hampshire, with others urging her to fight on.

In the same story, Drudge claims anonymous insider quotes from the John Edwards campaign:

Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be out."

"Her money is going to dry up," Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.

When I published my earlier story, none of the campaigns had responded to requests for comment. Since then, I have spoken to Edwards' chief strategist, Joe Trippi. Our conversation leads me to question, while Drudge's analysis may be correct, is he trying to move the ball? We also spoke briefly about After the jump, Trippi's comments on this, the chances of an Edwards/Obama ticket, and a few other things. Like where Drudge's 2nd quote really came from. First things first. That quote that Drudge attributes to Edwards through a "top source"? The quote is actually Joe Trippi's, and the source is Talking Points Memo's TPM Election Central. Trippi echoed the sentiment to me, but he explained, "It's politics 101. Donors want to fund winning campaigns, so it stands to reason, if a frontrunner does poorly, the donations will dry up."

I asked Trippi about the first quote, again attributed to "Senior staff" that John Edwards says he is staying in the race because Hillary "may be out soon." He said that John had never said this to him or in his presence, that Edwards planned to remain in the race for the duration no matter what. He also said it was "very unlikely" that the candidate would say, or did say it to anyone else.

I asked because when I saw Drudge's story, I wondered if there was a little self-fulfilling prophecy at work there. A single anonymous source is not the stuff of rock-solid journalism, but it is the pebble for a rolling snowball of buzz to form around. I tried to verify the quotes, both with Edwards' and Clinton's campaigns, but was unable to. Now, I wonder just how "inside" Drudge's Clinton source really is, or whether he's putting tea-leaves in someone's mouth.

On the subject of partnering with Obama on a Presidential ticket in the general election, Trippi said, "We're not ruling anything out or in at this point. It's too early, we're just going from one state to the next, trying to win."

We discussed Iowa briefly, where he says Obama outspent Edwards "by triple, and Hillary more than double, and we still got 30%." When asked about fighting Obama's superior war chest, he replied, "At this point, it's a tarmac fight. The candidates go from state to state, and the visibility is there. When the debates go down to 2 candidates or 3 candidates, that favors the guy with the message."

The Clinton campaign has not returned calls for comment, nor did the campaign of Barack Obama. Stay tuned.