Gov. Beverly Perdue will lead one of the Obama administration's five regional discussions on health reform.

Perdue, who was a hospital administrator and health consultant before entering politics, will lead a discussion in Greensboro on March 31st. Other sites will be in California, Iowa, Michigan and Vermont, Rob Christensen reports.

The announcement came on the day that President Obama held a health summit in Washington.

Details of the event will be announced later.

If John Edwards' sex scandal had broken in January rather than in August, who would have Edwards’ absence helped?

Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's campaign director, claimed that with Edwards out of the race, she might have carried the Iowa caucuses, instead of finishing third, Rob Christensen reports.

Highly unlikely, said David Redlawsk, the director of the Hawkeye Poll.

When Iowa Edwards supporters were asked who their second choice might have been if Edwards was not viable, 51 percent Barack Obama and 32 percent said Clinton.

"Monday's claim from Howard Wolfson that two-thirds of Edwards supporters would have supported Clinton is just not supported in the data collected directly from those who actually participated in the caucuses," Redlawsk said. "Had Edwards not been running, and if nothing else had changed, my data suggest that Obama would have ended up even further ahead of Clinton than he was."

John Edwards will not endorse another candidate today.

At his concession speech in New Orleans today, the Democratic presidential candidate will not urge his supporters to back either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Barb Barrett reports.

Instead, he will talk about his signature cause of fighting against poverty. His wife, Elizabeth, and his children plan to accompany him at the speech. He'll then go to work on houses being constructed by Habitat for Humanity. 

After his loss in Iowa, Edwards ran hard against Clinton, taking shots at her during a debate and siding with Obama as a candidate for change. At one point, his campaign sent out a press release declaring the era of the Clintons over.

He had also cricitized Obama for being too willing to negotiate with lobbyists, but not to the same extent.

Edwards has not ruled out endorsing another candidate in the future.

Richard Reeves thinks John Edwards' response to the Iowa results was out of touch.

The syndicated columnist writes that he doesn't understand Edwards' line after coming in second place: "The status quo lost and change won. We saw two candidates who thought their money made them inevitable."

Writing from Paris, Reeves says that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd were the "status quo," but he wonders how Barack Obama fits in the equation:

If Edwards thinks Obama, the half-Kenyan guy who just got to Washington three years ago and spoke out passionately against the toy soldier senators marching as to war, is part of the status quo, then the very rich former senator from North Carolina is totally out of touch with Iowa and North Carolina, too.

Reeves writes that Obama is "not your father’s America, unless your father came from Kenya."

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is campaigning for John McCain in New Hampshire.

After speaking to about 750 people at two Iowa caucuses and working the phones, the North Carolina senator is now spreading his "firsthand knowledge" in the Granite State, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Burr says he hopes that his experience in the Senate with McCain gives his endorsement some weight:

"That's why I committed and committed very early," he said. "Most members of Congress look at it and see a down side (to endorsing.) That's a judgment call everyone has to make.

"I feel strongly enough that John McCain should be president that I'm willing to go out here and invest my time."

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole does not plan to endorse in the primary. 

On "Hardball" today, Elizabeth Edwards took aim at the media.

Host Chris Matthews began to talk about John Edwards' second-place in Iowa, comparing it to the results in 2004, when John Kerry took first place.

Edwards interrupted. Why was he beginning the discussion with that, she asked? "We lead with the winners," Matthews replied.

EDWARDS: But I—you know, but—and that happened to us, too, in terms of John Kerry getting a lot of press. The other thing, of course, we had the "Dean scream" in '04, which sort of made second place, which John had—not mean as much because you all covered that, as opposed to the second-place finish. Now, of course, you're covering Hillary's third-place finish instead of John's second-place finish. So we're still fighting against you guys.

Hat Tip: Andy Bechtel

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa—Iowa Caucus winner Barack Obama give his victory speech on a television monitor in the empty ballroom of the Renaissance Savery Hotel in Des Moines, where John Edwards accepted his second place finish earlier in the night on Thursday, Jan. 3. (Robert Willett)

From The Editors' Blog of the N&O:

Two of North Carolina’s top political consultants – Democrat Gary Pearce and Republican Carter Wrenn – say it’s not over yet for Edwards. They made their comments on the Headline Saturday television show, a joint project between WRAL and The N&O that airs at 7 p.m. Saturday. Wrenn and Pearce, who opposed each other in the titanic Hunt-Helms 1984 Senate campaign, also made predictions in the 2008 North Carolina’s governor’s race. Their predictions might surprise you.

DES MOINES, Iowa—There are advantages to having a private jet.

John Edwards left Des Moines in the early hours of Friday morning to fly to New Hampshire where he held a morning rally. Not so for Rob Christensen, who sends this report:

I'm trapped in Iowa for a day because there are no commercial flights on Friday that can get me home to Raleigh.

In fact, there is a mass exodus today from Iowa—an estimated 2,500 journalists, thousands of volunteers and campaign staffs, and just political junkies like the two guys from Ohio who I met in Grinnell who were here just to be part of the scene.

Local newscasts warned of delays at the Des Moines International Airport as thousands drop off rental cars and caught flights out of Iowa. I got the last seat on a plane out of Des Moines Saturday morning—and I made my reservations a week ago.

The conventional wisdom may be that John Edwards didn't get the results he needed in Iowa.

But the Edwards folks say their fundraising doesn't reflect that.

The campaign says that contributions over the Internet have been pouring in since Edwards' second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses yesterday.

The campaign did not provide specific figures, but Joe Trippi, Edwards' senior strategist, said in a statement that the campaign was on track to its "best online fundraising day ever."

The campaign said that half of those who have contributed are first-time donors and that more than 92 percent of the online contributions are for amounts less than $100.