Given that I was pretty tough on Obama's health care performance tonight, I just want to say that I think his comments on the Henry Louis Gates arrest were surprisingly frank and brave. "Any of us would be pretty angry," he said, adding, "the Cambridge police acted stupidly" by arresting someone in his own home. Unfortunately, it's considered rather radical for a national politician to criticize cops. But as Obama pointed out, you just can't elide the fact that "there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately." We'll see how this plays out in the media. The indispensable Adam Serwer predicts, "Reporters are going to act like this was a 'betrayal' of a post-racial promise Obama never actually made." --Dana Goldstein
