Chris Dodd, who over the past few months earned much respect if not the nomination, has endorsed Barack Obama.

“It’s now the hour to come together,” Dodd said, in an appearance with Obama at a news conference in Cleveland. “This is the moment for Democrats and independents and others to come together, to get behind this candidacy.”

Dodd also made it clear he’d rather serve in the Senate than be Veep. May he long serve in the Senate.

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Cliff Schecter crunches numbers so I don’t have to. Be grateful.

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Right-wing bloggers and some leftie pro-Clinton bloggers are flogging a story that suggests Obama was involved in a shady land deal, as described in this somewhat turgid news story (I love the way Antoin “Tony” Rezko is referred to as “Mr Obama’s bagman” — biased, much?). The story implies that Rezko got Obama a hefty price reduction for a house, but the sellers say that was not so; Obama’s was the best offer. I suspect we’ll hear more about this.

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The shriek you hear is coming from Little Green Footballs: Obama says that pro-Israel doesn’t mean pro-Likud.

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I hope Andrew Sullivan is right:

I’m struck at how many of my fellow pundits still haven’t grasped what is going on out there. They keep using their old devices and tropes to describe something actually new. Last night, I watched Hannity say the word “black” pejoratively about half a dozen times in expressing his fear and loathing of the Obama phenomenon. It was like listening to Lou Dobbs talk about Hispanics. You could see he thinks this is going to work. When Kristol is reduced to actually saying “the politics of fear” rather than simply exploiting it, you realize that the Obama campaign has not just discombobulated Clinton. It has discombobulated the pundit class elsewhere. You even hear long-time defenders of the Bush Republicans talk darkly about big government – as if they didn’t love it for the past seven years, as if they give a shit about the size of government outside election campaigns.

They didn’t see it coming. They still have no clue what they’re grappling with. By the time they do, it may well be over.

We’ve got a long way to go, so I’m trying not to go all gushy yet, but so far I’ve been impressed with the way Obama has handled the smears (see John Aravosis on this).

What Sullivan says reminds me so much of the Dems and Reagan in 1980, and 1984, and the rest of the 1980s, for that matter. Whatever you think of Reagan as president, the man had a native genius for politics, and he pulled the whole GOP along with him. Even in 1988 I don’t think the Dems realized what they were grappling with. Bill Clinton, another political genius, knew how to finesse the game and stymie the Right, but for all his charm and appeal he couldn’t help his party.

I’m not saying Obama is unstoppable, as we’ve got a long way to go. But if Sullivan is right, we could be on the edge of something bigger than one election.