NEW ORLEANS — Democrat John Edwards bowed out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, saying it was time to step aside "so that history can blaze its path" in a campaign now left to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November," said Edwards, ending his second campaign in the same hurricane-ravaged city where he began it more than a year ago.

Edwards said Clinton and Obama had both pledged that "they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency."

"This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause," he said before a small group of supporters. He was joined by his wife Elizabeth and his three children, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack.

It was the second time Edwards sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Four years ago he was the vice presidential running mate on a ticket headed by John Kerry.

Four years later, he waged a spirited, underfunded race on a populist note, pledging to represent the powerless against the corporate interests.

He finished second in the Iowa caucuses that led off the campaign, but he was quickly overshadowed — a white man in a race against the former first lady and a 46-year-old black man, each bent on making history.

Edwards said that on his way to making his campaign-ending statement, he drove by a highway underpass where several homeless people live. He stopped to talk, he said, and as he was leaving, one of them asked him never to forget them and their plight.

"Well I say to her and I say to all those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you. We will fight for you. We will stand up for you," he said, pledging to continue his campaign-long effort to end what he frequently said was "two Americas," one for the powerful, the other for the rest.

The former North Carolina senator did not immediately endorse either Clinton, seeking to become the first female president, or Obama, the strongest black candidate in history.

Both of them praised Edwards — and immediately began courting his supporters.

"Particularly during this campaign he has made poverty a centerpiece of his candidacy and it needs to be on top of the list of American priorities. ... I want to wish John and Elizabeth well and thank him for running a great campaign that was really important for millions of Americans," Clinton told reporters in Arkansas.