Throughout the campaign, Elizabeth Edwards really stood as the champion of universal health care, acting as the progressive community's barometer for candidates' health plans. Good enough? Needs a mandate? Elizabeth guided the debate.

So it's great to see a new $40 million push for universal care, headed by Elizabeth herself:

A consortium of progressive groups, think tanks, trade unions and activists are set to launch a $40 million health care campaign to prepare the ground for the next president to sign expanded care early in 2009.

The work of Health Care For America Now was first made public late last week. But the group, with Elizabeth Edwards as a figurehead, offered expanded insight into the details of its campaign during a meeting on Monday. In addition to spending $40 million -- $1.5 million of which will be put behind an initial ad buy (national TV, print, and online) -- the group will be sending organizers to 52 cities, blasting out emails to 5 million households, airing spots on MSNBC and CNN and submitting op-eds to major papers (officials hinted at the New York Times piece to come).

You may already see the campaign's web ads right on MyDD (I saw one between posts earlier).

And just like during the primary, Elizabeth's work won't be gun-shy about calling out Democrats:

In addition, the campaign is going to take advantage of Moveon.org's massive data files to reach out to like-minded supporters and officials promised to work in Democratic and Republican districts alike.

"We'll have an organizer in the district of every Blue Dog Democrat," said HCAN campaign manager Richard Kirsch of the conservative Democrats.

"The focus of the campaign," he added, "is on national legislation. "This year, however, it is also a referendum: do you support quality, affordable, health care for all, or an alliance with the private insurance industry?"

The discourse in a general election gets crowded, so it's great to see this effort to keep health care on the front burner.

The groups first TV ad after the jump...