After denying the obvious for I don’t even know how long, failed vice-presidential and presidential candidate John Edwards is set to finally fess up: he did indeed father Rielle Hunter’s baby.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards will admit he is the father of his former campaign aide’s 18-month-old baby, a TV news station in North Carolina reports.

WRAL says sources told the station Edwards’ public admission could come before the end of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether his campaign illegally paid the woman, campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, to keep quiet about their affair.

The news comes a day after the National Enquirer reported that a secret DNA test proved Edwards’ paternity.

The Enquirer, which last year broke the story of Edwards’ affair with Hunter, said the test was taken after Hunter tried to get financial help from Edwards for her 18-month-old daughter, Frances.

Hunter apparently agreed to testify to a federal grand jury investigating whether Edwards broke campaign finance law by paying “hush” money to Hunter and another aide who claimed paternity of the child. Hunter was spotted last week in Raleigh, N.C., entering a federal courthouse, where she spent nine hours.

Edwards adamantly denied during a confessional interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he said he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said while promoting her book that she doesn’t know if her husband is the father.

I think it’s not only highly possible, but highly probable that Edwards paid Hunter off. His PAC paid her just short of $115,000, after all. Just coincidence? Unlikely. John Edwards has pretty much been laying low since it came out that he cheated on his wife (who was fighting breast cancer), and it’s highly likely that his political career was destroyed because of the affair. How could it not be? His faithful wife accompanies him on the campaign tour, all the while suffering from breast cancer, and meanwhile he’s boinking some trashy woman, who he eventually knocks up. He lies to his wife, lies to the country, and denies the baby is his, even though anyone with two eyes to see could tell whose child it was. Meanwhile, Rielle Hunter got shoved under the bus when all of this came out faster than you could blink. He was just being who he’s always been, though. He’s been nothing but an out-for-money, exploitative sleazebag his entire life, first as a lawyer, and then as a politician.

It really is no surprise that Edwards’ political career is pretty much over.