The DemConWatch website is a US blog which has provided a wealth of information on the Presidential campaign, focusing initially on the Democrat nomination and since then on the Presidential and Congressional contests. It is run by partisan Democrats, and doesn’t hide its bias in that sense, but it none the less provides solid, well referenced information about a lot of the finer details of the long and varied electoral processes.
Along with tracking a lot of the polls, the site has also been tracking which candidate each of the major newspapers are officially endorsing. It’s unclear whether the editorial endorsement of a newspaper actually provides any benefit to a candidate, but the justifications some of them provide can still be interesting.
One newspaper to endorse Obama is the Chicago Tribune. In one sense this might seem to be no surprise, as it comes from his current home town in Illinois. But it is also the first time the paper has endorsed a Democrat Presidential nominee since it was founded in the 1840s, so it carries some significance (and has drawn a huge amount of reader feedback). They have seen him operate up close for longer than any other major media outlet, putting them in a good position to assess whether or not Obama is just a celebrity who is lacking in substance. They clearly think the opposite.
Many Americans say they’re uneasy about Obama. He’s pretty new to them. We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.
The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.
Not bad coming from an editorial page which describes itself is “a proponent of conservative principles.”
