Endorsing Obama

Glenn Reynolds says Obama is morphing into a candidate that he can actually support, and I have been feeling the same thing after reading his movement away from a principled position on the war in Iraq. Personally, I want someone who can try to get the politics as far out of the calculus as possible (right or left) and make sensible decisions based on some kind of rational calculus based on actual plans and their possible outcomes. The fact that he seemed so radical in the primary was, to me, meaningless, since if you know anything about the median voter theorem, what goes on in the primary has no bearing at all on what goes on in the general election. People sound like left-wing or right-wing fanatics to get elected, because of the middle of the left or the middle of the right is still way outside the center, however you slice it. But once that race is won, it's a full-on sprint to the center, and it looks like barring some scandal, McCain cannot even hope to catch the guy in such a race, despite McCain's strengths as a centrist. Part of this is because it really does depend on the distance from the base that the candidate has to travel in order for them to capture these votes along the way, and my sense has always been that McCain cannot afford the middle ground the way that Obama can, because McCain's movement to the middle seems to wrought with suspicion by his base in a way that I think Obama's will not be seen, or at least not nearly as much. This isn't to say that he won't pay for it, but it does mean he has the capital to do more towards moderation than McCain does. This isn't the first time that you'd have a Democrat who was topically extremely liberal, but in practice very pragmatic. Like Reynolds, with the surge being so successful, it seems to be so reckless to me to advocate an ideological position which would evaporate the gains being made. As I read the other day, Iraq may be moving from a failed state to a fragile state, or something to that effect. But Obama is an intelligent man, and more and more everyday, I'm liking him. Who knows, I may actually do something radical and not only vote (which I personally think is a waste of my time anyway) and vote specifically for him. But I doubt it too...