Today The Economist officially endorsed Barack Obama as President of the United States.

The endorsement touches on a number of factors which led to my own transformation, but of course, elaborates on them more eloquently because, well, it’s The Economist.

A choice excerpt reminds me of one of my key (and favorite) posts illustrating my fitful morphing from McCain-to-Obama:

If only the real John McCain had been running

That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday.

The stars keep aligning. What options are left for us to sabotage ourselves now?

The [Alaskan GOP] is pushing for the re-election of Senator Ted Stevens, who was convicted on Monday of seven felony counts but continues his campaign for a seventh full term, in the hope that his re-election will allow Republicans to hold onto his seat even if Mr. Stevens eventually resigns.

Under that chain of events, a special election would be held later to replace Mr. Stevens, giving the party the chance to find a new candidate and keep the seat out of Democratic hands.

“That’s the reality,” said McHugh Pierre, a party spokesman. “Unfortunately, the situation’s the situation.”

I’m sure that McHugh once had aspirations of using his liberal arts degree for some noble purpose. Now, perhaps acting out of an ego bruised by the eccentricity of his name, he’s instead lowered himself to the level of Accomplice to the state Party Machine, which is hurtling itself towards a fate that even Sarah Palin refuses to condone.

At the risk of yet another rhetorical question….: can it get any worse than that?