Barack Obama may have to do some back tracking today.

Roland Burris is going to meet with Harry Reid and Dick Durbin in the Senate today and you get the sense that Burris may be seated after all. Legally, he seems to have the upper hand plus Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein broke with the party yesterday and now backs Burris. There are grumbling of other cracks among Democrats as well on this.

Now remember President-Elect Obama did not want Burris to be seated. Let’s flashback to his statement on this last week:

“Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat," Obama said in a statement. "I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it. I believe the best resolution would be for the Governor to resign his office and allow a lawful and appropriate process of succession to take place. While Governor Blagojevich is entitled to his day in court, the people of Illinois are entitled to a functioning government and major decisions free of taint and controversy."

If Burris is seated, what does he say now? How does he spin it? This isn’t a black eye for Obama but now he’s in the position of either disagreeing with his party on this if they decide to seat Burris (highly unlikely) or coming up with a creative statement to back track a bit on his statement from last week. It’ll be interesting to see how he spins out of this one.

Comments?