Greg Mitchell reports Obama picked up 12 newspaper endorsements over the weekend. Yesterday, I wrote about the St. Louis Dispatch’s endorsement of Obama, in part because it called McCain “the incredible shrinking man.”

Greg has an excellent rundown on the endorsements. Now, I don’t think these endorsements necessarily translate into votes, but they are adding to the sense of momentum for Obama.

Reading through a number of the endorsements, I’m finding four general themes: 1) Our nation is in peril; 2) McCain has been a major disappointment; 3) Palin is an idiot; and 4) Obama is the president we need.

I took some excerpts from a couple of the endorsements unveiled today. McCain doesn’t fare too well.

Dayton Daily News:

Sen. McCain’s campaign has been as disappointing as his move toward party orthodoxy. More than his opponent, he has run a relentless stream of commercials that have been discredited by nonpartisan fact-checkers. (Last week, all his ads were negative.) He has articulated no vision for the country other than to suggest that it should believe in him as an individual, as a war hero of independent judgment. His selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate was stunning. She is shockingly lacking in presidential qualifications. Some of Sen. McCain’s most enthusiastic supporters have been forced to admit this. Her defenders say her resume compares well with Sen. Obama’s, but it does not. Alaska is tiny in population and atypical in its issues. And she’d been governor for only a year and a half when she was tapped. At any rate, as some interviews have shown, she’s no Barack Obama. Sen. McCain presents her as a fellow “maverick.” Nonsense.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Despite the recent nastiness of his campaign. Sen. McCain is essentially a good man, but he is yesterday’s man. His campaign takes its core text from the “Wizard of Oz”: Don’t mind the man behind the curtain. That man is George Bush, the failed magician who cannot be spoken of lest the American people be reminded of what he has wrought and what party he belongs to. To make their trick work, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Palin, trade heavily on being mavericks — too heavily to be believed. It is true that Mr. McCain has a capricious streak that has made him a thorn in the side of his own party on various issues. Yet while he has not joined the know-nothing brigade in climate change denial, he has picked a running mate who is a diva in the drill, baby, drill chorus of fossil-fuel adulation.



Toledo Blade: