So, Senator Bob Graham (D- Fla.) has withdrawn from the race for the 2004 Democratic Presidential Nomination. Hopefully, this will enable him to start working on shoring up some support for a shot at the V.P. position, allowing the Dems to maintain some degree of limited relevance in the New South (I mean, seriously, Sen. John Edwards is so gone and Gen. Wesley Clark is a "barely-there" Arkansan, which sounds suspiciously like some sort of designer undergarment).

One of the sadder elements of this withdrawal, however, is not the loss of a veteran politician with relevant international experience, but the manner in which the withdrawal occurred, as per the Miami Herald:

In an anticlimactic finale, the 66-year-old Graham made his announcement during an interview on CNN's Larry King Live, keeping much of his own senior staff in the dark about his fate until the end of a 52-minute segment on the show examining the future of Las Vegas duo Siegfried & Roy.