With either Clinton or Obama as the Democratic candidate, it is going to be hard to defeat McCain in November. That, I think, is an unfortunate truth. To optimize our chances I think it is essential for all Democrats to face the truth - our candidate will either be Obama, badly wounded, and campaigning for the support of a fractured party, still licking its wounds from a long drawn out primary campaign, or it will be Obama, fresh from a 4 month respite from campaigning against Clinton, and with a united Democratic Party behind him.

The latter should be the choice of all Democrats. And, that will occur only if Clinton and her supporters are ready to accept the reality that this isn't Clinton's year. Clinton needs to put the needs of our country above her personal desires and graciously concede now.

When Novemeber comes and americans have to fill their gas tanks with five dollar a gallon gas, pay for it with a U.S. dollar that isn't worth a quarter, do you really believe the vast majority will go to the polls and vote for John more-of-the-same McCain? I think the wheels will come off the McCain campaign wheelchair long before Novemeber.

"I never expected anyone in the media to abandon a narrative that gives news channels so much to report on."

Possibly they think that the Big Speech will ignite a lengthy conversation on race that they can report on instead. Or that the release of Clinton's records as First Lady will allow them to make Monica Lewinsky a household name again.

I may be on a limb here, but I think Mike Huckabee's response to Obama's speech was the tipping point.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gTFLOu8fjxU

The big question about Obama was always whether he really had the ability to make Republicans willing to meet him halfway on anything. If not, it was a better strategy to elect someone who could dig in her heels and fight for everything the Republicans wouldn't give.

I think that watching a recent Presidential candidate happily support Obama and undercut what must have been Karl Rove's pet talking point for the general election, we have our answer. Huckabee probably just blew his chances to be the Republican VP candidate, but he's still probably the most popular politician in the Bible Belt right now, and if his point of view is popular there, Obama has just won big-time.

Oh, and Huckabee's definitely going to get his knuckles wrapped for this.

And, as if on queue, I see TPMEC has a story that the FEC reports the Clinton campaign is in the red. Do these smoke signals indicate fire?

The press loves the "horse race". It is why they persist in this. Without the internecine Democratic fight, nothing much will happen until the "main event" later in the year.

We'd just have to content ourselves with Britney Spears and Heather Mills McCartney until then.

So sad that idiotic hasn't posted here...

I think the MSM's just waiting to see which way the wind blows tomorrow. Or tonight. The shit is flying so fast this past two weeks that the minute an event is reported you either discover it's false, or that it's a spin, or that the public or other news outlets prefer to spin it another way, or that something bigger has happened.

At some point the MSM's pandering to pundits, polls and public opinion was bound to get them all balled up. Maybe they'll become like an oraborus, and swallow themselves up, and someone here can start building an investigative news structure from scratch. Oh, wait, isn't that what all this blogging is about?

I think she's been hanging on in hopes that Obama was going to stumble and take a big fall. But if Rev. Wright didn't take him down, what is going to?

One of the problems you encounter when employing the kitchen sink strategy is that, if your adversary remains standing, there's nothing left to throw.

I agree Anthony. I am not worried about November, regardless of who the nominee is. I remember a point in the spring of 1988 when Mike Dukakis was 15 points ahead of George Bush - Iran Contra was still being felt, it looked like the party was unifying behind Dukakis and that Bush Sr was dogmeat, and then the tide of history crushed Dukakis like the tide of history is going to crush John McCain. Recession, foreign policy failure, scandal after scandal, domestic incompentence, lobbyist influence, past v future, 73 years old? Not a chance, that's why the right wing is trying so hard to help Hillary and destroy Obama.

I do think the continuation of a divisive and exhausting campaign will have a deleterious effect on the Dem nominee in November. Not enough to win it for McCain, even if Hillary is the nominee, but enough to make it much closer than it ought to be. It's obvious that the only way Hillary can win the nomination is through a brawl, and I would like nothing better than to have put an end to that possibility two weeks ago, but the reality is that she earned the right to continue her campaign in Ohio and Texas -- even if Rush helped her do it -- she earnded the right to see this through to the end of the election cycle. After Puerto Rico, if she is 100 elected delegates behind, behind in popular vote, behind in # of states won, and behind in swing states -- all of which is true today -- then (but only then), she has to step aside.

Before then, she has every right to continue. No, she doesn't get away with this cheating bullshit and get the MI and FL votes to stand -- that would be completely unfair and in violation of the rules of the nominating process as established by the Party and agreed to by the candidates before they took place. But she has earned the right to compete through to the last primary in Puerto Rico. That said, if she (aided and abetted by Penn and Wolfson) continues this bizarre strategy of torching the house to beat Obama -- alleging issues about Rezco while entertaining Rich and others who actually got favors for huge donations, conceding McCain's experience as a qualification for CiC while questioning Obama's, launching a false attack on NAFTA when it turns out you were an active supporter back at the beginning after all, etc. -- when she continues down that path, I think the superdelegates have the duty to step in and say "no, we are not going to allow a candidate who is almost hopelessly behind by every metric there is to fracture and destroy the party and damage its chances for a broad based victory in November by countenancing any further brawling along these line" One can only hope.

But even with all this carnage, or potential carnage, I am absolutely certain that the GOP will go down in flames in November -- I just wish it would end, and the negative energy would stop.

The Politico article cited in this post was loooonnng overdue, IMHO. As I've already said in previous posts, the corporate media was sustaining corporatist Hillary's campaign on a kind Schiavo-esque life support since at least the Potomac primary. It's nice to finally see some extra-blogosphere acknowledgment of that dynamic.

BTW, does anyone else find it perplexing and/or amusing that it seems to be shrill dead-ender night on the TPM front page? In all fairness, I have decided that if Hillary were to secure the nomination by superdelegate coup I'd be writing in Obama come the general. However, I don't imagine anyone here would give a shit, let alone post that on the front page.

Maybe I don't use enough exclamation points.

I wonder what has changed in the last couple of weeks that put Obama over. Did he hit that magic 2040 mark? Did Clinton’s campaign get derailed by some scandal or revelation casting doubt on her judgment or damaging her ability to run against McCain? I mean if something were to come out that could be used over and over to decimate her campaign in the GE, I could see how she would be forced to concede- for the good of the party and all. I'm getting a bad feeling again about Dem chances.

Math You Can Believe In, Huh? This is not a new argument, and Hillary still isn't going anywhere until the primary season is over. Nor should she. I'm not sure why Obama supporters are so against having all the states have a voice. If it's already over...what are they worried about?

If Obama has already won, then he's won. Clearly he hasn't, because otherwise there'd be no debate. If it's up for discussion, then it's not over.

If the superdelegates had faith in Obama, they would use the math argument to push Hillary out. But they won't, because (sorry kids) major questions remain and are arising about Obama's electability and even those who won't admit it know it. His inability to win over working class whites and Latinos poses a serious electoral problem. Rev. Wright is a major general election question mark. Contrary to the wishful thinkers here, the Wright story is not over and his speech did not play nearly as well with independents, working class whites and Latinos as it has in the MSM and left-wing blogosphere.

There's no reason for anyone to drop out until every state has weighed in. I defer to the words of Bill Clinton on this: chill out, and let the voters decide. The Dems are in trouble in November regardless.

The only news scheduled to come out before the PA primary is Hillary's tax returns. Her WH schedule will divulge more damaging info as reporters pore over it and trickle out articles that put the lie to her experience claims. A prime example is the WaPo report that shows her story about running from snipers at the Bosnian airport in 1996 is a complete fabrication. Another is her cheerleading on NAFTA. A few more revelations like those and the media will go overboard and brand her a laughingstock. That backfired once but if they keep it respectful this time they'll seal it.

Other than that we may see more endorsements, most likely for Obama. We'll also see a slow but inexorable march of super delegates to Barack.

Once again I think Obama managed the Wright and Rezko controversies masterfully. He was either very lucky or intentionally pushed the timing to get them frontpaged and out of the way at this point. Either one could have been devastating if they'd happened in the midst of primaries a week apart. As it is the Rezko story is over and he has 4 weeks to put the Wright story behind him. The cablenets can't talk about it much more because there isn't any more news there. They have to move on because the economy is falling apart and Iraq is boiling up again.

It's a hoary old maxim that a month is a lifetime in politics. The overarching story you see today will be vastly changed by April 22 because of the intervening news cycles. She'll win PA but it won't be a blowout and it won't be nearly enough. There will be death knell sooner or later when one of her big supporters or a Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore or Howard Dean endorses Obama or publicly says it's time for her to concede.

BrandoPolo, it's pretty interesting that Hillary supporters are now talking about prolonging the primary season when a few short months ago her minions were trying to jump MI and FL to the front of line when they assumed their state organizations, her name recognition and money advantage would make her the nominee by the end of the night on Super Tuesday.

Terry MacAuliffe her finance chief and former head of the DNC is the architect of the frontloaded primary system. The idea has always been to avoid these kind of long, wasteful, dirty primary fights. She built her campaign on that frontloaded primary system and when it didn't work what do we get? On to the convention! Let every state vote!

You don't get to change the rules in the middle of the game. Pretending Hillary is still viable when her organization is so bad she can't even win the delegate count in states where she's barely won the popular vote is foolish.

Obama is going to be the nominee. The only question that remains is whether Hillary can and will bloody him up enough to give the win to McCain in November. If that happens I guarantee you she has as much chance of ever being president
as Joe Lieberman.

"I'm not sure why Obama supporters are so against having all the states have a voice. If it's already over...what are they worried about?"

It's about maximizing our chances for Nov.

Notice Edwards didn't stick it once he knew he couldn't win. Clinton is just being a selfish jerk. She can't win, and is hanging on and harming our chances. Even worse, she and Bill keep praising McCain.

BTW, everyone in the whole freakin' country seems to forget that

superdelegates can change their minds at any time either before or at the convention.

A "committed" delegate isn't committed at all; the current "superdelegate count" is basically a straw poll, not binding on anyone in any way.

Many superdelegates committed to Obama or Clinton before before the primaries and caucuses were well underway, before Obama seemed even remotely viable. Obama's gotten more "commitments" in the past month or so, but if he falls way behind or gets into some serious PR trouble that calls his viability into question, his "committed" delegates can follow the current polls and facts and switch to Clinton, which would force Obama to quit. The same goes for Clinton's supposed "delegate lead"; if there's clear public support for an Obama presidency, they'll jump ship.

Sorry for all the quotes; I'm feeling a bit over-punctuated today.

The fact that Obama is going to win our nomination speaks well to the basic intelligence and courage of Democrats and like-minded Independents and Republicans who reject the politics of fear.

We've taken a dim view of ourselves because of the outcome of the past two elections. It's time to get over that disappointment and embrace the reality that, just maybe, 2008 ain't 2004.