Something I’ve been quietly brooding on for months is is a hunch that if Obama gets the nomination he will be assassinated by one of the thousands of nutters loose in the US — cut down just as JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were in their time. Now I find out that I’m not the only one with these worries. Here’s an excerpt from a piece in today’s NYT:

DALLAS — There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?

In Colorado, two sisters say they pray daily for his safety. In New Mexico, a daughter says she persuaded her mother to still vote for Mr. Obama, even though the mother feared that winning would put him in danger. And at a rally here, a woman expressed worries that a message of hope and change, in addition to his race, made him more vulnerable to violence.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in an interview, reprising a line he tells supporters who raise the issue with him. “So stop worrying.”