It's almost visible ... the slow shift from confidence to puzzlement to doubt to sadness to recoil. Even people who are without doubt Obama supporters (Joe Biden, for example .... or me for another example) have simply not wanted to accept what they are seeing, because it's so at odd with the respect, and in their case *liking*, that they have had for John McCain.

I've been taken to task for this and had my intelligence doubted, but the truth is that I have always had some genuine respect for him. I was delighted he's the one getting the Rep. nomination, and genuinely believed that this would be a respectful campaign on the issues, at least as far as the candidates themselves were concerned.

Human beings simply don't want to think that they have been so wrong, over such a long time. And if you were wrong *then,* how can you be sure you aren't being wrong *now*??? I think what Fineman and Mitchell and others are saying or showing is that their inability to believe that the person they felt they knew is running THIS campaign, saying some of the things he is saying.

For me, the scales got ripped from my eyes with his comments on the recent habeas corpus decision from the Sup Ct. Yeah, I'm a lawyer so I can get really exercised about things like habeas corpus, but it IS important, it IS fundamental .... and above all, it is something that a person who was held prisoner would - at least should - understand far better than anyone else. If he could say what he did about that decision, if he could take the position he did on the torture bill ..... then he cannot be the person I thought he was. Whether I was wrong or he has changed becomes immaterial and something to analyze later --- a person who holds that view simply should NOT become President of this country.

I imagine there are going to be moments like that for many individual voters - and individual politicians - and analysts and commentators like Fineman. It may be very different moments for each of us, but there will be *some* critical issue or statement that simply forces you to acknowledge that the McCain running for President is not the person (or not still the person) we've admired all these years.

Fineman would be a good one to watch -- I respect him a lot, even his obvious wish to have his assessment of and beliefs about McCain make sense. But he's fair and listens and thinks and I suspect he will get there.

One thing that has pleasantly surprised me about Obama is that once he became a serious contender, he didn't start letting his advisers or important supporters start changing and bending the basic person that he is. Maybe it's because he's young that he can say "if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it my way" ... but for whatever reason, there hasn't been that sea change in personality and procedures that you saw in Clinton when she started losing .... or in McCain when he started winning.