I think it is safe to say that when the Presidential candidates were picking their #2's,Barack Obama considered, among many factors, the impact that his choice would have among Jewish voters. John McCain didn't.

Before they picked their veeps, it was considered possible that McCain would make inroads among those Jewish voters who make their decision based on support for Israel. That is a minority of Jewish voters but probably enough to swing a state like Florida or even Nevada.

The Obama campaign wants those voters. It does not necessarily need the 78% of the Jewish vote that went to John Kerry, but it certainly wants more than 70%. That requires some outreach to Jewish voters -- mostly seniors -- who were not comfortable with Obama.

Then Obama picked Biden who is about as close to the pro-Israel community as any member of either house. Biden is rated 100% by AIPAC (while at the same time being a strong supporter of the two-state solution). He is also the most knowledgeable Member of Congress on Arab-Israeli issues. When he goes to the synagogues in Florida, he goes not as a visitor but as "mishpocha." The Jews simply love the guy.

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This is great.

Not only is she the least qualified candidate for national office in decades, not only is she virulently anti-choice and anti-environmentalist, she's a Pat Buchanan supporter.

At least with Joe Lieberman, Mc Cain could have picked up my Aunt fanny in Miami. Now she's voting for Obama!

I guess Mc Cain decided he can't win.

The last time anyone picked a VP with this little experience was Goldwater in '64. He picked William Miller, who no one had heard of, because "he drives Johnson nuts" and Goldwater knew he was going to lose anyway.

Romney would have been a serious choice. This is anything but. It suggests that Mc Cain himself is not a serious person. He's just playing.

Mc Cain thinks feminists still upset about Hillary will support a right-wing, anti-choice woman simply because she's a woman. He thinks it will drive the Democrats crazy. It won't. But it will cause the Republicans to think that Mc Cain has lost his mind,

He hasn't. But he has lost the election.

He did it.

And he did it by listening to the critics and delivering not soaring rhetoric but detailing an agenda, bashing John Mc Cain and explaining precisely how he differs from the Republicans

What a change. I desperately wanted Al Gore and John Kerry to win. But they disappointed me over and over again by not changing when their message and the manner of its delivery were failing. Gore kept being Gore and Kerry kept being Kerry.

But Obama has watched and listened over these past weeks and months, seen what works and doesn't work, heard the critics and delivered big time.

In other words, Obama listens, learns, and, when necessary, retools. And that is why he is not Gore and Kerry, but FDR, Kennedy, and Clinton.

He's a resilient, deft politician and he's going to win. He will do what he has to do, just like he did tonight.

This is a repost of what I wrote here in TPM in 2006.

I just came across a troubling incident that Bob Woodward reports in his new book. Very troubling.

The rest is history.

And now Carville is trying to sink Obama.

Check this out.

It's from the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz and it's by an Israeli journalist who is covering our election from New Orleans.

This is his take.

"What may frighten some Americans about Barack Obama is his very excellence. His fiercest critics have so far had little else to go on.

"But if he is truly that scary, why is it so necessary to lie about him?

"If the real truth about him is so frightening, why is it so necessary for someone like Daniel Pipes to ingeniously resuscitate the lie that Obama is a Muslim?

"If the actual facts are so damning, why was it so necessary for Fox and others to pump up the packet of hardbound fictions called Obama Nation, a miserable book whose manipulative distribution propelled it to a debut at the top of The New York Times best seller list?

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This is depressing.

I agree with Herbert that Obama is clearly behind NOW. But I think that can change and that our ground operation on Election Day can make the difference. In any case, once the Democratic choice came down to an African-American and a woman, it was inevitable that racism or sexism would be a significant factor. If we wanted a 10 point lead, we should have nominated a southern white male (like the late lamentable Edwards).

I have been keeping tabs of my favorite phrase white Democrats use to justify their anti-Obama sentiments. Obviously, they can't say, "hey, he's black." So they say "who is he" or "I don't know anything about him."

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Greg Sargent reports on Howard Wolfson's acknowledgment that there is a Clinton-Obama rift and that Barack had better reach out and heal it.

This is crazy. Did John Kerry have to deal with Gephardt and Dean's hurt feelings in '04. Did Gore have to demonstratively feel Bill Bradley's pain? Did Clinton have to reach out and touch Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas?

It's bizarre. It reminds me of what LBJ had to do to appease the Kennedys after the assassination. It didn't do any good either. Bobby did everything he could to sink LBJ anyway. But that was more understandable. Kennedy was killed and his people were grieving.

But the Clintons merely lost a nomination fight. Big deal. There are winners and there are losers and until now no nominee has had to suck up to the other side. As we say on Passover, "why is this nominee different than any other nominee?"

Why indeed?

You have to marvel at just how bad Bill Kristol is. I don't mean because he's a conservative. So are David Brooks and George Will, two popular conservative columnists who are smart.

But Kristol is ridiculous. He is actually the only New York Times columnist who simply pastes his party's talking points into his space on the op-ed page. The Times pays his for this?

Anyway, today he endorses Joe Lieberman for VP. He tells Republicans not to worry about Joe's rather traditional Democratic positions on most things they care about. They should pick Lieberman anyway because....they should.

It just goes to show what I've always said about the neocons. They are neither Republicans nor Democrats. They are simply Mideast hawks. Kristol is no more "pro-life" than I am. It's all a game.

I don't think the GOP will choose Lieberman although I hope they do. Imagine a Biden-Lieberman debate!

But read Kristol. You have to love the whole tears for Hillary shtick. If this is the best these neo-nuts can do, they are really finished.