Rochester for Obama

ALL OF THE FOLLOWING ARE FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN

Marc Ambinder puts his finger on the real reason for the Obama surge. It's not, I think, simply punishing the GOP for the financial meltdown. It's also the public's judgment of which candidate responded better to the events of the last two weeks. McCain seemed unstable, bombastic, temperamental and at times, hysterical. Obama seemed, well, presidential.

Here's what I think matters more than ideology at this point. The American people have lived through a nerve-wracking few years. So many certainties have collapsed. We had 9/11 and then Abu Ghraib. We had the Iraq fiasco and the Katrina catastrophe. Now we have the structure of capitalism on the brink. Americans do not want a president adding to the drama. They want calm and authority and reason.

And that's why the attempt to paint Obama as a flaming radical is so ill-timed.

Obama just proved that he is a careful, calm guy in a crisis. What the voters saw is at odds with what the GOP is now saying. So in that context, it's the GOP that's damaged outside its core believers. (Obama's immensely difficult job if elected president will be to bring those deeply alienated people back into the national fold.)

In the end, temperament matters. And in a country desperate for assurance and poise at the top, Obama is winning that debate. It's no surprise to those of us who've followed him closely for a while. But for most voters, this is a new and first impression of Obama's character. And it's powerful.

The "Danger" Of Obama
A reader writes:

What McCain and Palin are doing now makes the Clinton campaign look tame. It occurs to me that they are "legitimizing" putting Obama's life in danger by pushing this nonsense. The first potential Black President is always going to have that problem, hell Bush had people trying to take him out, I'm sure, but this is really raising the threat level.

Saying your opponent is unfit is one thing, suggesting that he is a evil, a friend of terrorists and a danger to the United States is something else entirely.

Hagel's wife to back Obama

The wife of Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel plans to endorse Democrat Barack Obama. Lilibet Hagel has scheduled a 10 a.m. news conference in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday with Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Republican President Eisenhower. Susan Eisenhower also is an Obama supporter.