Edwards backs Obama's White House bid

By Jeff Mason

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (Reuters) - Former U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards endorsed Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday, giving a major boost to the Illinois senator's efforts to unify the party behind his bid for the White House.

Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee, had been heavily courted by both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton in the past few months.

"The reason I am here tonight is the Democratic voters in America have made their choice and so have I," Edwards, who dropped out of this year's Democratic race in January, said at a rally with Obama in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

"There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to create one America, not two, and that man is Barack Obama," he said, as Obama sat on a stool behind him.

The long-awaited endorsement helped blunt the impact of Clinton's landslide 41-point win over Obama in West Virginia on Tuesday. That result barely put a dent in Obama's lead in the Democratic race for the right to face Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.

Obama has an almost unassailable advantage in delegates who will pick the nominee at the party's convention in August, and has turned his attention to a general election match-up with McCain for the past week.

He gained the support on Wednesday of four more superdelegates -- party officials who are free to back any candidate -- as well as the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Edwards praised Clinton's "strength and character" but said it was time for Democrats to come together against McCain. He called Obama on Tuesday night to tell him he was ready to make the endorsement, an Obama aide said.

The backing of Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, could aid Obama's efforts to win the support of the white working-class voters who have flocked to Clinton in recent contests.

Edwards made a populist economic agenda on behalf of lower and middle income workers a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and has focused heavily on efforts to battle U.S. poverty.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, won fewer than one-quarter of whites without college degrees in West Virginia, exit polls showed, similar to his showing in other states.

Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, who suffers from cancer and has become a well-known political figure, did not accompany Edwards to the Obama rally. She has not endorsed either candidate.

Clinton's campaign shrugged off the endorsement.

'FAR FROM OVER'

"We respect John Edwards, but as the voters of West Virginia showed last night, this thing is far from over," Clinton's campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said in a statement.