The “other” ex-President.

“‘Obama’s campaign has been extraordinary and titillating for me and my family,’ Mr. Carter said…’He has an extraordinary oratory…I think that Obama will be almost automatically a healing factor in the animosity now that exists, that relates to our country and its government.’“

Former president Jimmy Carter compliments Barack Obama, although he also says he will not be endorsing anyone before the nomination is decided. “Mr. Carter also said he talked by telephone at length on Monday with former President Bill Clinton, who was ‘trying to explain that he was not raising the race issue’ on the campaign trail…Mr. Clinton ‘has said a few things that I think he wishes he hadn’t said,’ Mr. Carter said. ‘He doesn’t call me often, but the fact that he called me this morning and spent a long time explaining his position indicates that it’s troublesome to them, the adverse reaction.’”

Grind ’em out.

“Link describes Obama as a ‘calculating’ cardplayer, avoiding long-shot draws and patiently waiting for strong starting hands. ‘When Barack stayed in, you pretty much figured he’s got a good hand,’ former Senator Larry Walsh once told a reporter, neglecting to note that maintaining that sort of rock-solid image made it easier for Obama to bluff.” Poker writer James McManus reports on Barack Obama’s card style, and gives a brief overview of presidential card-playing.

Sebelius — and anti-Gitmo lawyers – step up.

“‘I think he represents the kind of leader that we need for the future of the country,’ Sebelius told The Associated Press. ‘I think he brings the hope and optimism that we really need to restore our place in the world, as well as to bring this country together and really tackle the challenges that we have.’” Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius endorses Barack Obama for president. (Sebelius also gave the Democratic SOTU response last night, and her upcoming endorsement was one of DC’s worst-kept secrets last week.)

And another intriguing endorsement via the Daily Dish: Obama gets the support of 80 volunteer lawyers of Gitmo detainees: “Some politicians are all talk and no action. But we know from first-hand experience that Senator Obama has demonstrated extraordinary leadership on this critical and controversial issue.” (Their full statement is here.)

Tribune of the People.

“Obama can help this nation move forward…In the minority party for all but his final two years in the Statehouse, he tempered a progressive agenda with a cold dash of realism…Racial profiling, death penalty reform, recording of criminal interrogations, health care — when victory was elusive, Obama seized progress. He did so by working fluidly with Republicans and Democrats. He sought out his ideological foes. He listened closely to them. As a result, many Republicans in Illinois have warm words for Barack Obama.” One I missed earlier: Sen. Obama’s hometown paper, The Chicago Tribune, endorses him for president.

Hayden: The Kids are Alright.

“[T]oday I see across the generational divide the spirit, excitement, energy and creativity of a new generation bidding to displace the old ways. Obama’s moment is their moment, and I pray that they succeed without the sufferings and betrayals my generation went through. There really is no comparison between the Obama generation and those who would come to power with Hillary Clinton, and I suspect she knows it. The people she would take into her administration may have been reformers and idealists in their youth, but they seem to seek now a return to their establishment positions of power. They are the sorts of people young Hillary Clinton herself would have scorned at Wellesley. If history is any guide, the new ‘best and brightest’ of the Obama generation will unleash a new cycle of activism, reform and fresh thinking before they follow pragmatism to its dead end.”

In The Nation, SDS co-founder, author of the Port Huron Statement, and longtime progressive Tom Hayden endorses Barack Obama for president. “Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agenda. Such movements in the past led the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt to achievements they never contemplated. [As Gandhi once said of India’s liberation movement, ‘There go my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.’] We are in a precious moment where caution must yield to courage. It is better to fail at the quest for greatness than to accept our planet’s future as only a reliving of the past. ”

Chronicle of a Win Foretold?

“Clinton, who arrived in the U.S. Senate four years before Obama, has tried to make experience the issue…But if she wants to highlight her White House experience as a defining difference, then it’s only fair to point out that two of the projects she was most deeply involved with produced a debacle (health care) and scandals (fund raising). Especially in recent days, her campaign has shown the sharp elbows that evoke the ugly underside of the Clinton years, and the (Karl Rove inspired) Bush years that succeeded them: the reflex to scorch the Earth, to do what is necessary to vanquish political adversaries … all is justified if you are left standing at the end.

The San Francisco Chronicle endorses Barack Obama for president. “America deserves better than these cycles of vengeance and retribution. Its possibilities are too great, its challenges too daunting, for partisan pettiness.”

Barack, Beloved.

“This letter represents a first for me–a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.”

Author and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison endorses Barack Obama for president. “In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace — that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.“

Also, since Toni Morrison’s invoking of Clinton as “the first black president” has been getting a lot of run lately, it helps to remember it in context. “Morrison was not saying that Bill Clinton is America’s first black president in a cute or celebratory way, nor was she calling Clinton an ‘honorary Negro.’ Rather, she was comparing Clinton’s treatment at the hands of Starr and others with that of black men, so often seen as ‘the always and already guilty “perp.”‘”

“It is time now for Barack Obama.”

I feel change in the air.

Every time I’ve been asked over the past year who I would support in the Democratic Primary, my answer has always been the same: I’ll support the candidate who inspires me, who inspires all of us, who can lift our vision and summon our hopes and renew our belief that our country’s best days are still to come.

I’ve found that candidate. And it looks to me like you have too…

I believe there is one candidate who has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character, matched to the extraordinary demands of this moment in history.

He understands what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “fierce urgency of now.”

He will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past. He is a leader who sees the world clearly without being cynical. He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in, without demonizing those who hold a different view.

He is tough-minded, but he also has an uncommon capacity to appeal to ‘the better angels of our nature.’

I am proud to stand here today and offer my help, my voice, my energy and my commitment to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States…

We know the true record of Barack Obama. There is the courage he showed when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq.

And let no one deny that truth.

There is the great intelligence of someone who could have had a glittering career in corporate law, but chose instead to serve his community and then enter public life.

There is the tireless skill of a Senator who was there in the early mornings to help us hammer out a needed compromise on immigration reform — who always saw a way to protect both national security and the dignity of people who do not have a vote. For them, he was a voice for justice.

And there is the clear effectiveness of Barack Obama in fashioning legislation to put high quality teachers in our classrooms — and in pushing and prodding the Senate to pass the most far-reaching ethics reform in its history.

Now, with Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign — a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us. A campaign about the country we will become, if we can rise above the old politics that parses us into separate groups and puts us at odds with one another.

I remember another such time, in the 1960s, when I came to the Senate at the age of 30. We had a new president who inspired the nation, especially the young, to seek a new frontier. Those inspired young people marched, sat in at lunch counters, protested the war in Vietnam and served honorably in that war even when they opposed it.

They realized that when they asked what they could do for their country, they could change the world.

It was the young who led the first Earth Day and issued a clarion call to protect the environment; the young who enlisted in the cause of civil rights and equality for women; the young who joined the Peace Corps and showed the world the hopeful face of America.

At the fifth anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps, I asked one of those young Americans why they had volunteered.

And I will never forget the answer: “It was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.”

This is another such time.

I sense the same kind of yearning today, the same kind of hunger to move on and move America forward. I see it not just in young people, but in all our people.

And in Barack Obama, I see not just the audacity, but the possibility of hope for the America that is yet to be.

What counts in our leadership is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and our people.

With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.

With Barack Obama, we will close the door on the old economics that has written off the poor and left the middle class poorer and less secure…

So let us reject the counsels of doubt and calculation.

Let us remember that when Franklin Roosevelt envisioned Social Security, he didn’t decide—no, it was too ambitious, too big a dream, too hard.

When John Kennedy thought of going to the moon, he didn’t say no, it was too far, maybe we couldn’t get there and shouldn’t even try.

I am convinced we can reach our goals only if we are ‘not petty when our cause is so great’– only if we find a way past the stale ideas and stalemate of our times – only if we replace the politics of fear with the politics of hope – and only if we have the courage to choose change.

Barack Obama is the one person running for President who can bring us that change.

Barack Obama is the one person running for President who can be that change.

I love this country. I believe in the bright light of hope and possibility. I always have, even in the darkest hours. I know what America can achieve. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it — and with Barack Obama, we can do it again.

I know that he’s ready to be President on day one. And when he raises his hand on Inauguration Day, at that very moment, we will lift the spirits of our nation and begin to restore America’s standing in the world.

There was another time, when another young candidate was running for President and challenging America to cross a New Frontier. He faced public criticism from the preceding Democratic President, who was widely respected in the party. Harry Truman said we needed ‘someone with greater experience’ — and added: ‘May I urge you to be patient.’ And John Kennedy replied: ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do…It is time for a new generation of leadership.’

So it is with Barack Obama. He has lit a spark of hope amid the fierce urgency of now.

I believe that a wave of change is moving across America. If we do not turn aside, if we dare to set our course for the shores of hope, we together will go beyond the divisions of the past and find our place to build the America of the future.

My friends, I ask you to join in this historic journey — to have the courage to choose change.

It is time again for a new generation of leadership.

It is time now for Barack Obama.

— Senator Ted Kennedy, putting his significant record and experience behind Barack Obama’s candidacy this afternoon. Update: The speech is now on Youtube, as is Obama’s acceptance speech.

“A President, Like My Brother”?

Word leaks that Senator Ted Kennedy will endorse Barack Obama tomorrow. “The announcements also come on a weekend when the House’s highest-ranking Latino, California Rep. Xavier Becerra, also announced that he is backing Obama.“

“A President, Like My Father.”

“I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.”

In a moving editorial, Caroline Kennedy endorses Barack Obama for president. “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”