Casey quickly changed tune on endorsement

Sen. Bob Casey must have caught the Obamamania bug over the past few weeks.

Back on March 5, the day after the big Texas and Ohio primaries, Casey, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania, was very firm in talking to Politico about superdelegate endorsements, given the high profile of his home-state primary April 22.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, endorsements by superdelegates are vastly overrated,” Casey told Politico and a few other reporters outside the Senate chamber that day. “They [the candidates] have plenty of time to debate the challenges in Pennsylvania. … I said a long time ago I’d stay neutral.”

Casey also said he wanted to play a role as a “unifier” in the party instead of taking sides.

How quickly things change.

Today Casey endorsed Obama at a speech in Pittsburgh, saying he believed Obama would provide a "new path of hope and healing." In fact, Casey will join the Obama bus tour through Pennsylvania, adding the powerful Casey family brand name to the campaign.

Speaking to reporters after his speech, Casey said he could no longer stay neutral and believes in Obama "like I have never believed in a candidate in my life, except my father." Casey's father, Bob Casey Sr., was a former governor and one of the most popular Pennsylvania Democrats of his generation.

Obama now says this endorsement was as important as any he's received on the campaign trail.

In his March 5 comments, Casey warned that “our voters will have no patience for nastiness” if the Obama-Clinton fight continues to head in a negative direction.

Whether the Casey endorsement will have an effect on the polls remains to be seen. Hillary Clinton has a double-digit lead over Obama in most Pennsylvania polls.

UPDATE: Crypt colleague Carrie Budoff Brown has sent along comments from Casey and Obama.

"This campaign is a chance for America, a chance for America to chart a new course, to go down a different path. A path, first of all, of change, a path of a new kind of politics, a path – and finally a path of hope and healing," Casey said.

Casey also compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln.

"I’ve been impressed by so much watching this campaign. I’ve been impressed by his compassion, his strength, his ideas, and I think especially, especially under fire, he has appealed as ... Abraham Lincoln asked us to do many years ago to the better angels of our nature, and we appreciate that as he’s campaigning."

Obama says he did not seek the endorsement and understood the need to keep neutral.

"I told him I’d love to have his support but I understood that you know we’re behind in the Pennsylvania polls," Obama said. "I just want to say it would have been easy for Bob just to stay out of it, just to stay neutral. I think everybody would have accepted that. But when he called me and said, I think this is the right thing to do, it meant as much to me as any endorsement that I’ve received on the campaign trail."

UPDATE II: Casey spoke to reporters after his event and explained why he changed his mind about staying neutral.

"A lot of you could you be asking, I’m sure you will, saying well I thought you were neutral and now you have decided to endorse," Casey said. "It is a very simple answer. I am like a lot of voters. When you approach a primary like this and you have two very strong candidates, two candidates that are your colleagues, two candidates that will be very effective in the White House and you have to make a decision and for a long long time I was not only neutral. I was an undecided voter. And that changed recently. I became someone who made a decision in my heart as a voter to support Sen. Obama."

Casey said he could no longer "stay on the sidelines. I couldn’t do that in a state that I have worked so hard in. ... I believe in this guy like I have never believed in a candidate in my life, except my father."