Perhaps, gravity has befallen the expectations of the author. The nature of the campaign is changing, it a reasonable expectation that Obama will win the nomination, and although the campaign is not over a transition must begin. In fact is has begun given recent pronouncements from Obama's campaign.

On foreign affairs, Iraq is the political issue for this election, the grand bargain is for another day.

Well said, Bluebell. What I've seen over the past several weeks is a loosely coordinated strategy on the part of Clinton and the Republicans (with the help of MSM) to attack Obama on everything they can throw at him. And then, lo and behold, they all agree that his campaign is waning. Give it a break! But one thing is clear - we are now deciding who will represent the Democratic Party. If we decide on Clinton, I will despair for our party and our country.

Pablo

Steve,

It sounds like you need to get a clarification from Susan Rice. Can't you simply do that by dropping her an email and asking for a correction rather than assuming that the campaign is dodging and weaving?

Thank you for deciding to post this here as well as on your own blog (and I also send kudos for continuing to attempt to influence a raise in the quality level of games the campaigns are playing.)Your post reminded me of the time when TPMCafe had more analysis and less spin, spin of the sort starting with the presumption that one candidate or another is perfect and infallible, and then is answered with similar spin from the opposition.

Senator Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States. This apparently vexes Steve Clemons who -- like notorious Republican shill pundit George F. Will -- can't figure out how all this happened. But Mr. Clemmons has promised to stay on the case, so to speak, and threatens to figure out some important stuff one of these days. So President Barack Obama had better watch out. I think I have accurately summarized what Mr. Clemmons wanted to say in his somewhat peevish, meandering missive.

That's a classic case of wishful thinking. You want Obama to lose, so you're making a case of how he's losing, while of course he's winning. Anyone with any amount of thinking ability can see this.

Sane people support Obama.

Mississippi on March 11 was certainly a huge Obama victory in a significant state primary -- unless some people are just discounting or making invisible primaries with large numbers of African American voters.

Will the same technique be used to set aside North Carolina? And why is it that Clinton's claim to win all "large" states does not mean that she must North Carolina as a crucial benchmark? Everyone seems to be buying the spin that Indiana is the next big test for her. By what criterion (actual or self-described), unless black voters just "don't count"?

It seems to me that much of this disappointment rests on an early faulty assumption: that he was at some point not long ago "defying gravity." Who was it that propelled him into this outer realm? The press. The media. Certainly not me. Starting at a utopian vision is bound to lead to disappointment.

That said, I still think Obama will change the face of foreign policy. I still think he is light years better than McCain or Clinton on foreign policy. But he's gotta get elected to institute any of that.

How many of Clinton voters were actually Republicans who voted in the Democratic primaries as part of Rush Limbaugh's operation chaos? Maybe the superdelegates need to look into the role of the Rush Limbaugh voters in giving Hillary Clinton the wins in Pennsylvannia, Ohio, and Texas. Because without Limbaugh's operation chaos there would probably be a good chance that Obama would have wrapped up the nomination.

Adding to Obama's difficulties is the LA Times article that he helped arrange for Illinois to steer a substantial amount of state funds to a contributor - someone who bailed him out of financial trouble after he lost an election and had a dormant legal practice. It seems this man and his company hired Obama on a large retainer that represented almost all of Obama's revived legal practice. Obama didn't do anything illegal, it seems, but the article does support the growing notion that Obama is not a new politician, just a younger one.

It's a shame that the press and so many others bought into the idea that Obama was a grand mixture of JFK/RFK. It was an impossible standard to carry for an entire election cycle. Now we're left with asking, who the hell is he? I suspect he's pretty good (though Rev. Wright does bother me - I don't go for anti-Semites and the like) and I'll vote for him if he's the nominee, but I'm not so sure the country will be so generous.

While Steve is a Foreign Policy writer and analyist, he seems to skip over the fact that the candidates and the party are trying to close this thing down, one way or another, and very few of the voter's decisions or the Super Delegate ones are going to be based on fine differences in Cuban Policy (aside, perhaps, from Florida.) There will be time for close policy details should he be elected. Right now the staff concerns are to alienate the fewest number of voters and SD's, and to broaded the base of support, particularly in potential battleground states. That's priority one.

If you want to frame Cuban Policy in terms that will garner SD's and support base, forget about family visits and financial transfers, but do focus on agricultural exports to Cuba. At one point the Clinton Administration allowed negotiations to proceed for the sale of dressed Turkey and Turkey parts to Cuba -- something that very much interests Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and a few other Turkey producing states that may also be competitive in the fall. The contracts still exist, but have been shelved. Just announcing that they will be re-examined and perhaps allowed to execute would have a significant influence in parts of these states. "Foreign Policy" is not a voting issue unless it directly impacts. Export Policy as a subset of Foreign Policy certainly is.

Steve, a friendly warning: you might want to cool the Obama-shouldn't-dance-with-Fox theme.
It could earn you the kind of verbal pummelling Greg Sargent has just earned himself. It's not a pretty sight.
You're right about one thing. Obama's foreign policy thrust is fine, but his particulars are certainly open to criticism: his anti-NAFTA and pro-AIPAC ones come immediately to mind.
But cut the man some slack: he's been pandering only to the extent that's necessary to forestall a no-holds-barred Hillary ad assault.
At least he didn't chime in that he would obliterate Iran twice as totally as Hillary would.
His overall instincts are far saner -- and to the extent that this primary race allows nuance, he's been nuanced.
Finally, face facts: you no longer get to choose between Hillary and Obama. The votes are all but counted, and it's already Obama vs. McCain -- which should put your niggling objections in perspective.
Someone who distances himself from Carter's talks with Hamas would definitely get my vote over someone who doesn't have a clue whether Iran is Shiite or Sunni.

I think it is the media perception game, not gravity that hit the Obama Campaign---I am amazed at how effective the media is at truly becoming the messenger. In that regard you have to give it to Hillary Clinton--she has effectively fed the media-sheep who are in turn feeding the public-sheep. If we read and search and listen directly to candidates we are better off than allowing ourselves to be fed. If we abdicate our responsibility to think for ourselves, then George Will, Maureen Dowd and anyone else who wants to can tell us how to perceive. It's a choice to reject another person's perception for our own. Boycott mainstream media efforts to give the bias of the day!

Why don't you invite Obama onto TPMCafe to discuss these issues once he's the official nominee.

And THIS post may compleet the "Triumvirate Curse of Threes"!!

Pres. Carter and Rev. Wright represent an inconvenient political reality and truth that the status quo will CRUCIFY any who challenges their authority. It is interesting in this Easter-Passover season that the words and deeds of these two "cultural heretics" have been dragged into the forum for the inquisitory mandarins of cultural rectitude to lash them both severely, along with anyone else associated with them. (Ahh, Simon of Galillee, where art thou?)

For Carter, the Hamas legitimacy for Palestinian expression, and, for Wright, the victims who've been the collateral damage of US Govt benign or malignant neglect are denied a robust advocacy due to the culture that is suppressed by these mandarin-oligarchs. Pres. Carter's trip and advocacy for LISTENING to the grievances and proposals of those, who'd otherwise would use violence as their political expression, is denounced by the mandarins who do nothing more than give lip-service sympathy to the plight of the civilians population, a lip-srvice as meaningless and hollow as their political posturing for the plight of the people of Darfur.

Rev. Wright's bombasity in the tradition of the social gospel that echoes Jesus' driving the coin collectors and hawkers from out of the temple continues the ecclesiastical debate of whether subservience to authority (Rome) espoused by St Paul excludes the rebuking of secular authority that a prophet Samuel would have rained down on King Saul. Is there a devotion to principle that trumps nationalism and parochial provincialism? Even Jesus rebuked the pharissees and sadduccees as HE rebuked the cities and towns of Judah and Israel for their abuse of the poor and the weak.

Because the main stream "bleeds it leads" media has not done an investigation of the spread of AIDS or the distribution of cocaine and crack during the Iran-Contra administration of St Ronnie Reagan with his ex-CIA chief Veep, George H. W. Bush, as tooo conspiratorial and irresponsible a topic, the questions go begging "how was it, beyond the easy reductionist blaming personal irresponsibility, that such an esoteric virus and non-native plant product were able to have such widely insidious distributive spread in the black and minority communities?"

No such questions or insinuations are allowed. Cultural suppression for political expediency and the narrative of historical stereotypes and myths must be maintained. Jimmy Carter and Jeremiah Wright are secularly god-damned for their political and cultural heresies.

Let the mobs howl in the forum for these two criminals of the "state of suppressed questions" be condemned and rhetorically crucified and their legacy be in the pauper's graves of infamy and disgrace. But those with eyes to see and ears to hear know for themselves despite the Orwellian dissemblings of those who'd allow the inequity and injustice go unquestioned for any open serious discussion and debate.

As usual, I come late to the party, worn out by a work schedule w. two jobs, and thoroughly mashed tonite by the contradictory directives and the double-binds of the bosses at one of America's largest supermarkets. C'est la Vie.

Nevertheless. The problem is, there is no one really speaking for the necessary position: America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy.

Unfortunately, by winning World War II our grandfathers were put in an untenable Imperial position, and they slid and slided and postured as best they could with it, but somehow for the last few decades the Imperial Imperative on not upsetting America's imperial position has become the norm; or not just the norm, the ring that must be kissed in every "official" discussion of the situation, such as on TV by anyone or by any political candidate anywhere.

And it's killing us and killing the planet. All of our efforts to maintain the empire grow more frantic with less success. We spend more money THAN ALL OTHER NATIONS ON EARTH COMBINED on "defense" and "security" and "intelligence," yet we are noticeably LESS afraid of attack, MORE insecure and MORE stupid than other nations. (Please, please, repeat this in thousands of letters to AP-associated newpapers.)

The comments on the blogs show it: there is a minority, maybe ten million of us, maybe just five or three million of American citizens and residents, who understand: America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy.

(Certainly both Clinton and Obama are deeply flawed and deficient in this respect, for those of us who understand. However, in my prev. posts on TPM I explain why I will swim with the Obama tide as I'm one of the few who still have the chance to vote against Hillary.)

There is no political organization that speaks for us, and the zeitgeist of the culture militates AGAINST serious people giving serious, organized, attention to the problem of American imperialism ... indeed the culture as whole, including all the anti-authoritarian people who OUGHT TO be on "our" side, seems to be going straight to ignorant hell in an SUV at high speed.

Global Exchange and Code Pink come the closest to speaking to our concerns, but certainly GE and probably as far as I understand CP also are organized as 501(c)3's, in other words legally barred from endorsing candidates and overt political lobbying.

The millions of American citizens and residents who understand that America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy deserve to have a FRANKLY POLITICAL organization that reflects their views. If people with even greater activist reputations and expertise do not do so first, I will re-organize my life to accomplish this much-needed goal ... and to reprise the ancient junior high joke that was used against me plenty ... that's BOTH a threat and a promise. (Oh, and by the way, I have a solid reputation for organizing small-d democratic activist organizations.)

See my previous TPM posts on this subject, going back at least a year, for further ramifications of this basic postulate of the need for an activist POLITICAL organization focused on lobbying and educating AGAINST American imperialism in all its manifestations. Just before I got my vacation near the end of Feb., another TPM reader put up a gmail box for communications toward this organization -- did he, or will he, ever receive any email ?