Elizabeth Edwards, the political wife whose public battle with breast cancer, coping with marital infidelity and continued advocacy for the downtrodden raised her profile above that of her husband, died Tuesday, WRAL News has learned.

Edwards, 61, died at her Chapel Hill home, where family and friends had gathered in recent days after doctors informed her that her cancer had spread and recommended that she not undergo further treatment.

Edwards was first diagnosed with cancer in the waning days of the 2004 presidential campaign, when her husband, then-U.S. Sen. John Edwards, was the Democratic nominee for vice president. The couple didn’t disclose her illness until after the election.

The cancer went into remission after surgery and months of treatment, but it resurfaced in early 2007, as John Edwards was mounting a second run at the White House. The Edwardses agreed at the time that they wouldn’t allow the cancer to derail his candidacy.

Because the cancer had moved into her bones, her doctors said at that time that it was no longer curable but could be treated.

Khimm notes that Democrats really reached a nadir in the Lone Star State in 2004, when Tom DeLay’s 2003 redistricting scheme allowed the GOP to solidify its grip over every level of government in the once proudly blue state. But the Democrats’ darkest hour is now looking like it might have been a crucial moment in its current rebirth. Matt Angle, a veteran staffer for ousted Rep. Martin Frost (D-Texas), has made it his mission ever since to avenge DeLay’s meddling, and his efforts have begun paying off:

Down 14 seats in 2004, [Democrats] are currently within 3 of capturing a majority in the statehouse. They even have a shot at unseating GOP Gov. Rick Perry.

Much of this wouldn’t have been possible without Angle—and without the late Fred Baron, a Texas lawyer whose hefty donations to Democratic causes led some to dub him “the Texas George Soros.” Together, they created a state-based organization with a single clear mission: Help Democrats take Austin in five years.

Angle’s Texas Democratic Trust toils in the unsexy, nuts-and-bolts work of elections: developing 12 million voter files to target likely supporters, crafting sharper opposition research, and paying the salaries of Democratic Party staff members. Primarily bankrolled by Baron—who donated some $5 million—the Trust has raised nearly $12 million since its founding in 2005. State Rep. Jim Dunnam, the House Democratic Leader, remembers meeting with Baron shortly after the group launched. “He came in and said, ‘Y’all don’t worry—we’ll make sure the bill gets paid.’”

Baron’s financial aid to the Trust has been undeniably helpful, but the prominent backing of such a colorful figure has its drawbacks as well:

Texas Republicans have seized upon Angle’s wealthy financiers to paint the Texas Democrats as an elite party backed by trial lawyers like Baron, who is best known for paying for John Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter, to relocate during the presidential campaign. “It can be an Achilles heel,” admits Mike Lavigne, a former executive director for the Texas Democratic Party. He also cautions that Texas Democrats may have become overly reliant on Angle’s well-funded operation. “The state party needs to be self-sufficient—they need to have the ability to raise money.”

The Trust’s whole mission is supposed to culminate this November because the midterm elections will determine who controls the state legislature when Texas once again goes to the drawing board for redistricting. Whether it can buck the Republican tide that’s sweeping the nation remains an open question, but there’s no question its efforts, combined with demographic shifts within the state, are leading some to speculate about when the state will again turn blue in a presidential contest — and it might just happen sooner than you think.

I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.

Hard to make the case now that a few jabs at Sarah Palin can match — let’s leave Edwards aside — the conservative attack against the “lightweight” Sonia Sotomayor, or “Big Sis” Janet Napolitano, or Nancy Pelosi. And amusing to picture the “bipartisan” John McCain after his year of trench warfare against Obama policies and nominees. Fooled by John Edwards once; fooled by everyone else the rest of the time.

#1 in “Conspiracy Theories,” but what about the book is false?

Revelation one: John Edwards, who at that point was several months into his career-killing affair with Rielle Hunter, told Kennedy that it would be “right for the party” if he endorsed him.

I know you’ll do that and when you do what’s right for the party you will be with me. It can make all the difference. We can win this. I’ll win Iowa.

Revelation two: Bill Clinton definitely lost Kennedy after his attacks on Obama, but what really got Kennedy angry was when Clinton claimed that his wife was not really voting for a war in Iraq by voting for the 2002 resolution. Clinton “cited the support for the resolution by Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel.”

Kennedy, who had led the opposition to the war, was furious. “It was a vote for war,” he said firmly. “I was there. I said it at the time. That resolution was a vote for war. Everybody understood it.”

Revelation three isn’t as big of a surprise. When Kennedy endorsed Obama, “his endorsement came with conditions. Kennedy wanted a commitment from Obama that as president he would push for universal health care. He wanted it to be a first priority of an Obama administration. Obama agreed.”

“Which vice presidential candidate was taken off the campaign trail and which one was out there drawing thousands of people?” asked Joe Scarborough. Of course, then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) was not “taken off the trail,” and as TWI’s Laura McGann has reported, Palin’s crowds were always overrated. Scarborough’s quasi-co-host Mika Brzezinski followed this up by saying Palin represented “real Americans,” and that some people in “urban America” didn’t get it.

This is fascinating. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) lost the presidency with 48.3 percent of the vote, and no one seriously suggested that they represented “real Americans” or anything else. As Ben Smith reported after the election, at least 79 percent of Americans now live in urban areas; the people with whose opinion Brzezinski is so concerned represent a demographic and political fringe. Famously, the county in North Carolina that Sarah Palin pegged as an outpost of “real America” went for Barack Obama over John McCain, by 18 points.

By every metric, Palin is one of the less popular Republican politicians on the national stage: her ticket even carried less of the vote in Alaska (59.4 percent) than the Bush/Cheney ticket carred in 2004 (61.1 percent). And yet mainstream pundits insists that she represents more of the country than the people who won the 2008 election. It’s quite extraordinary.

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He said that for all the trauma that came of the 2008 campaign, he is not ready to declare that it had been a mistake to run, calling that a “very complex question.” He believed, he said, that he had pushed Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in a more progressive direction on issues including health care — Edwards was the first to propose an individual insurance mandate — and that the value of his having run will be determined partly by what Obama achieves on these fronts.

“Did it make sense to run and stay in the race? Time will tell,” he said.