I deeply regret that I haven't read this Lambert guy at Correntewire before but his post from Friday: Obama stump speech strategy of conciliation considered harmful, deserves attention and should be seen by as many eyes as possible before the Iowa caucuses.  

For some time, especially since Obama ducked out of the Lieberman-Kyl vote and chickened out on the MoveOn vote, I've had this little voice of nagging doubt in the corner of my head.  After two disastrous relationships, I have learned to pay particular attention to that little voice.    

My initial thought was:

I was on the verge of concluding that Obama might be too easily flattered into running before his time.  Or that he was a particularly malleable candidate who is somewhat at the mercy of savvy political types, looking for employment in a new administration.  Or that he was a bit too beholden to his wealthy patrons who don't like mandates