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The editorial board of the Lexington Herald-Leader endorsed Barack Obama today, just days short of Kentucky’s Democratic primary. “The opportunity for national renewal will be even greater if, as appears almost certain, Sen. Barack Obama is the nominee,” the paper said in its endorsement.

The paper touched on the fact that Obama has tapped into a widespread yearning for change in the nation’s politics, “Obama has given voice to a widespread yearning not just for a changing of the guard but for a changing of the game. And that ability to express a people’s aspirations is a mark of leadership. Like President John F. Kennedy, another senator who electrified young people, Obama also has the substance to transform idealism into action.”

They took the Kennedy comparison a little further and touched on Kennedy’s religion and Obama’s race, “its worth remembering that Kennedy’s Catholicism seemed as large an obstacle to popular acceptance in 1960 as Obama’s biracialism today. Our endorsement of Obama is also a statement of our faith in the electorate to look deeper than skin tone.”

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The editors pointed out that Obama needs to do better with voters who have supported Clinton, “This primary campaign has revealed a gap in his support, one that will be evident in Kentucky on Tuesday, as lower-income, less-educated, older and rural white voters line up behind Clinton. Obama needs to better connect with these voters and learn about their concerns, if not to win, then to govern in the unifying way that he has promised.”

This was one of the deeper more thought through endorsements that I have read this year. They acknowledged that Obama isn’t perfect, but he seems to be the right person at the right time for nation.

America needs a real leader, and of the three remaining presidential candidates, Obama is the only one that has shown true leadership.

Read the full endorsement:

http://www.kentucky.com/591/story/406525.html