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Disgraced former Democrat golden boy John Edwards has gone to trial for his alleged illegal activity of using campaign funds to hide his affair and love child during his last presidential run.  And while everyone else seems to – including his own friends and former supporters – he just doesn’t get it:

His confusion extended to the latest chapter in the drama — criminal charges alleging that in an effort to conceal his affair during the height of his 2008 presidential campaign, he illegally arranged for secret contributions of about $1 million to take care of Hunter’s needs as she prepared to give birth to their daughter, Quinn. Sometimes his painful bouts of self-analysis turned to frustration over his belief that he had been singled out among a long list of philandering politicians, living and dead, for pariah status.

“He knows he made mistakes,” [Glenn] Bergenfield says on the eve of Edwards’s trial, which is set to begin Thursday with jury selection. “But John thinks that the treatment of him is so unflinchingly horrible and that what he did is not so different from what others did — JFK, Clinton, the whole rogues’ gallery. We’ve had this conversation about his situation, and I remember he did compare it to Clinton. He said, ‘I did a horrendous thing, but I don’t know why I’m getting such an unforgiving treatment when you think of what other people have done.’”

Let me first say that I always regarded John Edwards as a classic, trial lawyer phony.  His pandering campaigns, fueled by class warfare where he constantly talked about “two Americas” were enough to turn my stomach.  After all, here’s a guy who chased ambulances for a living, had a magnificent mansion and great material wealth who went out and lectured those who earned a nice living for themselves (but nothing on par with what Edwards enjoyed) that their prosperity was wrong. 

And let me say also that while there’s truth in Edwards’ position that plenty of other politicians have had adulterous affairs like him, most of them didn’t conduct those affairs while their wife was dying of cancer...the same wife who Edwards used regularly as a prop in his campaign.  Granted, new information now tells us that JFK was about as disgusting a pervert as you can be – forcing a teenage intern to perform sexual acts on his friend and aid.  But Edwards’ betrayal certainly has a distinction to it due to his wife’s condition at the time.  It’s a bizarre commentary on Edwards that he can’t seem to understand that.

I don’t think the former Democrat presidential candidate is doing himself any favors in the lead up to the trial telling people that he is the victim of “unflinchingly horrible” treatment.