Dennis Kucinich, on the Republicans, in a line the Obama campaign struck from his DNC convention speech:

They’re asking for another four years–in a just world, they’d get 10 to 20.

Just how reluctant is the national media to let go of the Obama/Clinton unmendable fence theory? Check the lede of USA Today’s A1 story on Clinton’s speech last night:

Hillary Rodham Clinton capped her convention appearance here Tuesday by declaring “Barack Obama is my candidate,” a stirring and forceful embrace of her formal rival that party leaders hoped would end lingering divisions and coax disappointed supporters back into the field.

Now that it’s official, we’d like to once again register our hope that Senator Joseph Biden (D - Delaware) Is Thugged Out will return posthaste. The world is waiting, not least because–if the past is any indication–and, for the record, it always is–over the next few months (no, years!) we’re going to need someone to remind us of this essential doctrine, first promulgated on the occasion of Biden’s definitely condescending and possibly racist appraisal of the man who now heads his ticket:

Joe Biden’s comments are crazy ill in the worst way possible. Joe Biden says dumb shit on the regular, but this is above and beyond in several regards. But Joe Biden is a major American political figure with crazy foreign-policy intellect who likes to say insane things on the regular.

He’s also a great pick for Obama.

My buddy Ben Calhoun put together a great story for WBEZ on why Obama’s political success has had everything to do with choosing Hyde Park as his Chicago home. It does a nice job of answering one of the key questions left open by James Merriner’s “Friends of O,” (Chicago Magazine) and Andrew Ferguson’s “Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood” (The Weekly Standard).

1/ From Michelle Cottle’s “External Flame,” at The New Republic this week:

[T]his alliance may be an even shrewder move for [Caroline] Kennedy Schlossberg than for [Barack] Obama. It’s been 45 years since the fall of Camelot, and the family brand has begun to fade. A growing portion of the electorate was born after the deaths of John and Bobby and has a tough time relating to the Kennedy fixation of its elders. Under such conditions, what’s a committed custodian of the family legacy to do? Hitch her clan’s wagon to the hottest political star in decades. With a little luck, even as that old Camelot magic rubs off on Obama, the candidate’s energy and relevance will help sustain the Kennedy brand for a little longer.

2/ From my February Chicago Tribune article (PDF) on the Kennedy Obama endorsements:

The Kennedy name is the gold standard in Democratic politics, and it will remain so as long as John Kennedy’s assassination is a part of living memory. But the youngest people to vote for him in 1960 are 68 today, and seven out of eight Americans are too young to remember him as anything more than a historical figure, no more or less real than Roosevelt, Lincoln or Jefferson.

Edward Kennedy himself is 75. Besides his son, no third-generation Kennedy holds national office.

And thus, when Kennedy said Obama would not be trapped by the patterns of the past, it might not be because he was comically or tragically unaware of his own or his family’s position. It might be exactly the opposite: Perhaps he was too aware of that position. If that’s the case, then last week’s endorsements should be seen as an acknowledgment of just how fragile the patterns of the past can be.

By midnight Tuesday [i.e. February 5], after more than 20 states have weighed in on the Obama-Clinton race, we’ll have a better sense of how the Kennedy calculus affects the election in the
short run….

But in the long run, I wouldn’t be surprised if the endorsements do as much to help the Kennedys as they do to help Obama. Casting Obama in the Kennedy mold offers him authority, but it also offers the Kennedys a future, a way to keep the mystique alive.

QUICK UPDATE (7/1): Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me.

1/ Gen. Wesley Clark, from last night’s Verdict on MSNBC:

2/ Andrew Bacevich (who contributed to this piece) in “What Hath Bush Wrought” in the Boston Globe:

The burden of identifying and confronting the Bush legacy necessarily falls on Obama. Although for tactical reasons McCain will distance himself from the president’s record, he largely subscribes to the principles informing Bush’s post-9/11 policies. McCain’s determination to stay the course in Iraq expresses his commitment not simply to the ongoing conflict there, but to the ideas that gave rise to that war in the first place. While McCain may differ with the president on certain particulars, his election will affirm the main thrust of Bush’s approach to national security.

The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.

By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration’s entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country’s vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.