QUOTES OF THE DAY.

Now that Barack Obama has secured his party's presidential nomination, it is a good moment to assess the extraordinary and improbable thing that the Democrats have done. It was not intuitively obvious, particularly to those who saw the party's central task as winning back the Reagan Democrats, that the best way to retake the presidency would be to nominate an African American with an Islamic-sounding name. In the abstract, before Obama emerged, that concept had not suggested itself, and some political insiders may be excused for not immediately grasping its genius.

In reporting Karl Rove’s attempt to find an analogy that Republicans could relate to to describe Barack Obama -- “You know this guy…he’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by” -- ABC’s Jake Tapper posed the question, at the same country club, who would Rove be?The easy answer, of course, is “the guy who quit the club when it integrated.”