WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- John Edwards' endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama won't help the Democrats' front-runner with the white working class, but it marks a major step in the coalescing of the party's establishment elite around Obama, further isolating Hillary Clinton.

Edwards' announcement Thursday is, any way you look at it, more bad news for Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y. It comes the day after two Democratic superdelegates announced they were endorsing Obama, and also the day after three former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission -- one of whom was appointed by Sen. Clinton's own husband, former President Bill Clinton -- also endorsed Sen. Obama, D-Ill.

Even more tellingly, so did the legendary Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve who laid the foundations for more than a quarter-century of unprecedented prosperity in the United States by breaking the back of inflation under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Edwards' endorsement, in fact, reflects Obama's greatest political strength -- at least in the short term: his ability to be all things to all men and all women. Volcker is endorsing Obama as a responsible fiscal conservative who may be prepared to bite the bullet and let interest rates soar to prevent a potentially catastrophic collapse of the dollar and stampede of investment capital out of the United States.

But Edwards, although previously a free-trade liberal, reinvented himself in this year's presidential race and ran as an economic populist, championing the virtues of protectionism and restoring America's massively eroded industrial home base.