He was a leader then and he is a leader now.

Just the beginning. Many more to come.

He's not alone. Roz Samuels switches too

I think this is a good thing. What I'd like to see is them get to super-delegate parity, and then the rest of the supers stop endorsing, and let the "pledged" lead and the total lead be one and the same...so we can get clarity on who is and isn't ahead.

This is just the crack in the dam.

Lewis is one of the very few politicians in Atlanta, let alone Georgia with any shred of credibility. Off and on, he was my Congressman when I lived in Atlanta. He beat the corrupt Maynard Jackson machine to get his seat in Congress and is very popular in Congress on both sides of the aisle. He's not impulsive or thoughtless. He's a person of real integrity unlike the highly compromised Andrew Young, the crazy Cynthia McKinney, or Georgia's hopeless and corrupt GOP leaders. His switch to Obama will have real impact.

What kind of dew will Mr. Clinton get him? Mountain Dew, perhaps?

There were a lot of superdelegates who were reluctant to support Obama because they didn't think he had a chance in hell of winning. Some remained non-commital, some went with Clinton. Now that it looks like Obama might win, you'll see a lot more people jumping on the bandwagon before it pulls away.

No, that's not particularly courageous but, unfortunately, that's politics.

The snow is balling.

Nothing to see here, people. Move along!

Suprise, Suprise, another African-American voting along racial lines. Colin Powell says he may vote Democratic this year Is he voting for Hillary? No. Does he all of a sudden agree with Democratic principals? No. So, the reason is?

Couldn't have said it better myself. Definitely not a profile in courage.

virtual gang rape?

I thought it was Obama supporters who were supposed to be unhinged...

Eric el. al,

Word now, sadly, is that he's not switching, only mulling one.

Each time I look at the electoral competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I see a distinction that political science experts are missing. Has anyone noticed that Hillary Clinton is running a political campaign to become president? On the other hand, Barack Obama has started a movement that allows the average citizen to assist in his success. If he wins, we all win. This contest will allow us to see if a movement defeats a political campaign. Historically, it has! However, Hillary Clinton pales by comparison. She's invested five million dollars of her own money in her campaign because there aren't enough supporters to assist her in running for president. It's true that Barack Obama will become the first African-American president. Has anyone noticed that his style of campaigning is equally important and historic? The last time I ever heard of a movement of this magnitude is when I read about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Pres. John F. Kennedy; then, Sen. Barack Obama comes along. When the people are behind you you can challenge the king. We're seeing Hillary Clinton's campaign being tossed aside by a movement. Has anyone listened to the language, "Nothing can stand in the way of a million voices calling out for change. Yes, we can." Gotta love it!

The Atlanta Journal Constitution article was updated at 10:50 p.m. February 14, 2008.

I live in Lewis' Congressional District, and the howling here among his constituents about his support of Hillary has been getting louder and louder. There is overwhelming support here for Obama, and I do believe that Lewis will endorse Obama---and sooner, rather than later.

Maybe you are alluding to another contest, a contest Mrs. Clinton might have a better shot at winning:

Dewmocracy (officially written by PepsiCo as DEWmocracy) is a campaign launched by Mountain Dew, with spokesman Forest Whitaker on November 7, 2007. It is an interactive game on its own domain that encourages users to vote for the next flavor of Mountain Dew that will make its debut on shelves in 2008.

(Wikipedia)

Maybe in 2009, we will be drinking Diet Clinton Dew? Or Moutain Dew: Code Clinton? All in all, I would trust her as president of this beverage.

It's good to hear that he changed his vote after listening to his constituents complain. The one thing that I think rankles nearly everyone about the superdelegates is that they are elected officals who are responsible to the people who elected them, but seem to be able to cast their votes with total disregard for the interests of those people.

Lewis seems to be an example of the system working. Joe Lieberman is probably a good example of how it doesn't. I hope there are more Lewises in the mix than Liebermans (although I understand he personally is out).

I can totally understand why he went for Clinton. A lot of the 60s-era Civil Rights fighters (especially from Georgia) probably didn't think they'd live to see a black president. Lewis may have thought Obama would have a shot after a few more years of someone like Clinton roughing up the opposition. Seeing Obama crush the opposition in so many states and pick up crossover Republican votes in the bargain must have been jawdropping.

It's still possible for either candidate to win a nailbiter, but I hope that if it is close, the supers will be forthcoming about why they voted the way they did. If someone takes it by 22 votes, everyone needs to be confident that no more than 21 of them were payoffs. The worst case scenario for this entire election is that it turns out to be 23. The Republicans are flat on the mat and the count is starting. The Democrats can't afford to let them up again.

Guess Lewis finally got tired of pretending to be Hillary's black friend. I'm sure his supporters going overwhelmingly for Obama, and not being fooled by his praise of her, had little to do with it. I guess that's why we have democracy, because leaders often need to be led. Oh well, better late than never.

This is sure an interesting study in machine politics. Why did Lewis ever think Hillary was his best bet to begin with? For her and Bill's stellar record on black issues? Pulease.

Who ultimately got most screwed by NAFTA and financial deregulation? Poor white, brown, and of course black workers at the bottom of the totem pole, that's who. Those struggling to get into the middle class, while losing good labor jobs, being hit with huge credit and banking fees, soaring energy prices, pension funds going belly up, and the housing market imploding, and so on. All of which the Clintons contributed to making worse, directly and indirectly, by the Clintons and DLC passing supply side economics and deregulation throughout the 90s.

Machine politics encourage people to become risk adverse and trade on their past accomplishments and personal loyalties while accepting passive roles in safe positions. Even people like John Lewis, who has been another casualty in the politics of cynicism.

It's the same in business as companies tend to become less innovative with success, or in the media as journalists (and bloggers for that matter) start phoning it in over time.

THAT is what needs to change. No more anti-competitive duopoly. Not in politics. Not in media. Not in business.

Hillary really IS in the solutions business. We needed a solution to a potential scorched earth effort by Hillayr and BAM, the solution sorta delivers itself!

This is fantastic news and surely a sign of the times, too. Obama alone has the potential both to motivate the base *and* to bring new voters (be they genuinely new to the process or merely the sort of Indies/Republicans who reject McCain and Hillary for whatever reasons) into the fold. If we have the good sense to nominate him, we may very well witness the most commanding Democratic presidential victory in recent political history. An Obama nomination is a gamble, but not in the crass sense that Bill clumsily invoked pre-South Carolina. It's a gamble in the sense that we, as Dems, would finally (finally!) select a candidate with his own apparent gut sense of how best to frame potentially divisive issues in a way that puts progressive solutions in the best possible light.

The more I observe this primary season unfold, the more convinced I become that the generational factor (both w/r/t Obama-Clinton and Obama-McCain) is both a bigger and a lesser deal than some national pundits make it out to be. Bigger in the sense that some older Democrats, the ones who have been in the trenches long enough to grow a cynical shell after decades of disappointment from pledging their authentic allegiance to that essentially reactive, passive, and largely disunited "coalition" of interest groups known as the contemporary Democratic Party. Members of this group are good Democrats, some have even busted their butts at the local and state levels to get Democratic candidates into office wherever possible. The only paradigm of Democratic success (at the national level) they've ever witnessed or participated in -- i.e., The Clintons -- (save for the truly Old Guard, who represent a subset of this group) is seemingly imploding before their eyes: the arguable race-baiting, the revolving door of shady-at-best folks with which the candidate has surrounded herself, the appearance of aloofness and casual entitlement that drives so many of us absolutely bonkers when embodied by our current President, and the inability to craft and then hone a simple, appealing, yet principled core message with said President wallowing in the lowest approval rating of his or just about anyone else's White House tenure and with the nation facing bankruptcy and international disdain.

In short: members of this group, in my opinion, are as furious about the mess the next President will be handed, and -- as I myself was until relatively recently -- they want blood. And justifiably so. Ask 'em: they'll show you the political bruises they sustained in the protracted partisan battles that were emblematic of Bill's tenure as President. They remember how slimy and ruthless the GOP operatives (and their media-minions) behaved in the run-up to impeachment as well as the run to a counter-productive, ill-advised war. The generic model or frame here is vengeance, pure and simple. This is not to judge: in a righteous world, Bush would be behind bars for his arguably willful ignorance and the criminal behavior of his advisors, and I couldn't agree more. The specific model or frame is combat, battle: but more precisely, the gladiatorial games, with two opponents pitching their hopes of survival and success on their respective abilities to eradicate their opponent before being cut down themselves.

This is becoming a novel, so I'll wrap up. The Obama folks, at least on this generational argument, either didn't share the same formative experiences as the former group, or they *did* and have subsequently rejected them, floundering for a candidate willing to espouse an alternative model or frame. NOT in the interest of mealy-mouthed capitulation or centrist resignation, but in the interest of reframing the "battle" over the executive branch as a game requiring a different strategic approach. And I'm not just talking about 51+% vs 50-state approaches, either. Obama is suggesting -- albeit implicitly -- that we Dems and fellow lefties start approaching national politics with a chess metaphor instead of a wrestling or gladiatorial metaphor. Demographics are changing before our very eyes. The GOP is in its weakest position since Newt went and dumped a cancer-ridden wife and contracted a Cataract with America. The nation is facing challenges that rival the biggest its historically faced. And the current leading candidate for the Democratic party has the foresight to know that crafting a true Democratic majority -- one with the power to enact legislation, confirm progressive judges, and restore our standing in the world while protecting us all from harm -- is going to take the sort of strategy that involves less toe-to-toe combat and more crafty measures. It's not craven. It's pragmatic and idealistic: arguably the two virtues that best embody what America used to think were its representative attributes.

The Clinton-backers aren't wrong. They're just committed to a prior way of doing business. One that this observer thinks hasn't served us or progressive causes very well at all. The clamor for change isn't as vacuous as some make out: it's a recognition, even if only at gut-level, that the way we (Dems specifically, Americans generally) have been approaching how the federal government should and can operate has failed us. The shorthand Obama and his surrogates employ signals this potential shift in frame, but I want to suggest this shift in frame is really a shift in (party) strategy. And I suspect it'll work, and I believe it's goddamn brilliant. But the "hope" meme that's in danger of being ground to a meaningless pulp is key: we Dems have to be willing to take that leap of faith for it to happen. The Obama appeal to hope is as carefully crafted (again, not in a craven but a sensible way) as is his appeal to change. Reading between the lines, he's asking us to hope -- and trust -- that the Democratic Party can demand more from itself. But as William James (another pragmatic idealist if ever there were one) pointed out so many years ago: some propositions are such that, if we fail to believe in their potential efficacy before attempting to put them into practice, we are highly unlikely to succeed.

The Democratic Party must find its collective Will to Believe.

And then, we must get to work.

Clinton is unlucky to have run at the same time as Obama. She has planned this for a long time. Set it up as can't lose. But it seems someone like Obama comes along once in a generation (some would suggest not that often).
That said, I see him as a one term president. He won't likely be forgiven for the sins of the current administration that get put upon the next.

Years ago, I used to enjoy those little bottom of the page anecdotal or pithy quotations printed at the bottom of the pages in the Readers' Digest magazine.

Two of them were so reflective of common sense wisdom that they have stayed in my mind now for nearly half a century. I can only imperfectly paraphrase those two, but I think both do apply to the phenomenon we are watching in this democratic primary. Here are the two, as best I remember:

1] "Always react 'yes' to a new idea, and try to think of as many reasons as you can why its a good idea.....because there will always be plenty of people to tell you why it won't work."
[Think of this one relating to dismissals of Obama's message]

2] Two friends, 'A' and 'B' walk up to a street corner newstand where friend 'A' wants to buy a certain publication. The newstand vendor is really snide, surly and unhelpful to the calm repeated request by 'A' for that publication, and finally the vendor just slaps the publication down in front of 'A' in a final ugly gesture.
As 'A' and 'B' walk away, 'B' exclaims to 'A', "Why did you let him get away with that?"
'A' answers, "If he wants to act like that, that's his choice, but I'm not going to let him decide how I behave."
[Think of this one relative to dealing with ugly politicking]

I think the really interesting thing going on as we enter the home stretch is that, with Black support at 90% for Obama and Latte Liberals support very high, those factions have decided to go all in to take control of the party from the Clintons. Latte liberals have nothing to lose if she wins the pot. Black politicians have a lot to lose. When these little coups fail, the line of politicians with their hats in their hands gets pretty long outside the winner's office.

Again:

Yeah, disloyalty, going back on your word, and finger-to-thr-wind political bandwagon jumping are such admirable traits.

Maybe John Lewis and Hillary's black congressional "supporters" should make sure McCain's not looking like he may win it first before coming out so strongly for another Democrat.

No politics-as-usual or racial pandering to see here. Move along.

As an Obama supporter, I wish that you would fix the headline on this thread. Mr. Lewis has not announced that he will switch to supporting Senator Obama, so how can you post that he has. Let us deal in facts please. This thread title is wrong. Correct it.