Endorsement

Obama met with Clinton last night to discuss party unity and such things. What caught my eye on the CNN report was this bit of news :

Some of Clinton's closest supporters — the nearly two dozen House Democrats from her home state of New York — switched their endorsements to Obama Thursday.

[...]

"We're Democrats. Dammit to hell we fight. When it's over, we come together and go out there to win," said Rangel, the dean of the New York delegation.

The New Yorkers, said Rep. Gregory Meeks, have a duty "to lead this transition" to full party support of Obama.

This meeting was done on Thursday because, based on a Newsday report, almost all the delegation refused to be in the picture when Clinton gives her concession speech on Saturday. Or, as I would like to translate it, they refused to continue their roles of enablers.

Wow!

The New York Clintonistas seemed to have grown more than a pair. I mean, look at that video clip from MSNBC. It speaks volumes.

About 10 minutes past 1:00pm but the post is but nevertheless:

The formal act of endorsing a candidate is generally (and properly)limited to editorial pages and elected officials whose constituents might be influenced by their choice. The rest of us shouldn't assume anyone cares. My avoidance of offering a formal endorsement until now has also been affected by the pull of old friendships and my reluctance as a teacher and commentator to be openly partisan. But my conscience won't let me be silent any longer.

I believe that Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States.

Go read the whole thing NOW.

Previously : Robert Reich didn't expect to support Obama but now he is.

Oh wow!

I can't remember for how long I've been reading Kevin's column, but it is going to be at least 5 years now, if not more.

Kevin is the kind of centrist liberal that always throws me off-base; kind of like pro-choice Republicans --maybe it's the reason why I find him and Andrew Sullivan to be soul brothers. They have a lot in common, but only argue the minutiae about how big government ought to be.

So after weeks of reading his pro-Clinton posts, Kevin (who lives in California, btw) has done an about face : He's voting for Obama.

I've got some good reasons and some bad reasons for changing my mind. The good reasons include (a) the ugliness coming out of the Clinton camp over the past couple of weeks, which has turned me off, (b) a growing sense that Obama's steadiness running his campaign under fire is a good sign of what he'd be like as president, and (c) some of the red state endorsements Obama has gotten recently, which speak well for his potential to produce strong coattails in November.

There are also some not-so-good reasons. I'm half embarrassed to admit that this stuff even affects me, but the fact is that the actions of both the candidates' supporters and detractors has had an impact. Watching Andrew Sullivan rant and rave on a daily basis about Hillary, for example, has had the perverse effect of keeping me on her side. I just hated the thought of fever swamp hatred like that influencing my party's nomination. Conversely, today's Paul Krugman column, which was yet another installment in his months-long anti-Obama jihad had the opposite effect.