John Edwards has dropped out of the Presidential race. Pledging to stay in the race through Super Tuesday, Edwards' sudden departure came as a surprise to many. He ended his campaign just how he started it, talking about poverty with still hurricane ravaged portions of New Orleans as his back drop.

Thirteen months after it began , it ended for John Edwards.

"Today I am suspending my campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. But I want to say this, the son of a mill worker will be fine. Now our job is to make sure all of America will be fine," Edwards told supporters.

In New Orleans, a town that has undergone a slow rebuilding process after Hurricane Katrina, especially in low-income areas, John Edwards focused much of his 2008 bid for Presidency on the inequity between the rich and the poor, the inequity between the corporate boss and the worker, the inequity between the influence of the lobbyist and the average voter. He spoke on behalf of those again.

This work goes on. It goes on right here in Musicians Village. There are homes to build here and I neighborhoods all along the Gulf. The work goes on for the students in crumbling schools just yearning for a chance to get ahead. It goes on for daycare workers, for steel workers risking their lives in cities all across this country. And the work goes of for the 200,000 Americans who wore the American uniform, proud veterans who go to sleep every night in shelters, or on grates just as the people we saw on the way here today. Their cause is our cause, their struggle is our struggle, their dreams are our dreams. Do not turn away from these great struggles before us.

His campaign was unable to capitalize on a significant second place victory in Iowa. Perhaps it was his populist message that contradicted his stances as a candidate in the 2004 Presidential election or as US Senator of North Carolina where he sang a moderate Democrat tone on war, the economy, and the environment. Maybe he just couldn't break through the media and public obsession of well financed, demographically groundbreaking candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

A third place finish in his home state of South Carolina last Saturday killed all prospects of gaining the nomination.

Edwards supporter Peggy Huppert is the former director of Iowans for Sensible Priorities, a group that endorsed Edwards because of his commitment to decrease defense spending and increase progressive domestic spending. She thinks Edwards focus on poverty influenced the other candidates.

"He was consistently voicing a message very important to be heard that I think it was heard by the American people," Huppert says.

"When we look back, he had a very positive effect. He raised economic class issues in a pointed way that Hillary Clinton and even Barack Obama have refused to do," says Norman Solomon, Author and Syndicated columnist on Media and Politics says Edwards' exit will impact the outcome.

Solomon says that since Clinton is seen as the corporate establishment candidates, that "Most of his supporters will go behind Obama. I think this is very bad news for Hillary Clinton."

Edwards himself did not throw his support behind another candidate.

But the field is finally down to two and for the first time, no white male is vying for the nomination, which is too hard to tell if that could or could not impact the Democratic outcome.