Robert Novak’s new column concerning the campaign, linked to below among the featured articles, is a quite incisive analysis of Sen. Barack Obama’s big dilemma of the moment – how to get his support in the polls above 50%, which means trying to find a way to move toward a realistic position on Iraq without causing his most militantly antiwar supporters to sit out the election (or, worse, vote for Nader and thus perhaps swing some states to Sen. John McCain).
Unfortunately, it is also the last Novak column, at least for the foreseeable future. Over the weekend the columnist fell ill while visiting Cape Cod and was taken to a hospital, where tests revealed a brain tumor. (At this point no biopsy has been done, so it is unknown if the growth is benign or malignant.) This afternoon Novak announced he will cease writing his column for the time being.