Barack Obama has never been under the illusion that winning the nomination would take a single primary victory. He never thought that it would be over by February 2nd, unlike Hillary Clinton, nor, it seems certain, did he think it would be over when Texas and Ohio voted on March 17th.

Obama was never going to win states where Hillary had long ago established a large lead, among them Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Texas. They voted too early for his momentum to crest against a “super” candidate (or should we call her “automatic”) like Hillary Clinton. The Clinton machine, the inevitability of her candidacy, and the yearning on the part of the electorate for a sure victory made it impossible for even a natural like Barack Obama, in his year (in the sense that he is truly the candidate of the moment) to win these states.

But nonetheless, it would be a mistake to underestimate Obama’s long term strategy that we may now be seeing unfold. First of all, Obama may have realized about the Clintons and himself that the rest of the public did not. The Clintons fatal flaws are impatience, confabulation, and a sense of entitlement. Obama’s gifts are the opposite – patience, honesty, and equanimity. He has used these traits again and again against his opponents.

As an aside, equanimity is a rare but important facet for a leader. It was something people saw in George W. Bush that allowed him to lose sufficiently close to Gore to gain the White House. Bush was fine with losing. He did not see it as his right to win. He has had a steady hand in the White House during the past eight years of scandal, incompetence, and absent leadership. These kinds of crises could destroy an ordinary person. Bush is no ordinary incompetent. 

Senator Obama’s campaign has slogged it through the winter. Now that spring is here he seems ready to expend the political capital that he has built up over through the past three months of hand to hand combat with the Clintons. It’s worth re-emphasizing what he has done by taking on both Clintons single handedly while at the same time batting away Senator McCain, who has yet to attack Senator Clinton. Obama has essentially defeated the most popular Democratic president since Kennedy, who has run by proxy through his political partner for life, Ms. Clinton.

But what Obama has not been able to do until now is completely and totally define Senator Clinton, or rather, let her define herself negatively for the electorate, to see her she would be in a general election. These primaries have us shown two things. Firstly, that Senator Clinton and the former president are experts at a politics that is distinctly of the past.

That is to say, a politics of attack ads, cynicism and confabulation. This kind of politics can dominate when the media is in the hands of a select few. The age of the internet changed all of that and has made everyone a potential pundit. It has put the truth online on a never ending loop. This in turn has emboldened the official punditry on the mainstream networks and has injected a level of accountability into reporting that was not present in the last three or four presidential contests.

It also bears noting that the stakes now higher as well. Iraq, the economy, and the failed presidency of George W. Bush has given the media has a heightened sense of responsibility. They cannot fail the public in their role as the fifth estate and have tacitly agreed to subject candidates to a more thorough vetting of their character and their claims.

All of which leads us to the second thing the primaries have shown us. Senator Clinton’s (and her husband) have not yet made the transition to the new political reality imposed by the Internet. They still will do and say anything to win. They both lie with impunity whenever it suits their needs. They cannot stop it, either – it is the only way they know how to win. They are truly victims of a newly recognized condition – Democratic Republican Stockholm Syndrome.

Democratic Republican Stockholm Syndrome is a disease that strikes democratic candidates who have been conditioned to believe through being witness to seemingly countless Democratic defeats that the only way to win in politics is through lying, sliming, and attacking your opponent. This is its own kind of elitism – a belief in the noble lie, that one cannot trust the public by conducting an optimistic and honest campaign (unless you want to lose – hence their mantra, “Obama can’t win”). It is a belief that the public only responds to a veneer that covers the truth. Hence, any lie is excusable (“you gotta do what you gotta do”) and any political tactic allowable given the stakes at hand.

Getting back to the moment in the campaign in which we find ourselves right now, in the past three months we have seen the Clintons exhibit all of the symptoms of this condition but it would have been a major misstep for Senator Obama to accuse the Clintons of this style of politics without the evidence and the political capital of his own to make that argument. Now, given the tipping point of recent events, he can go press this in the final week of the Pennsylvania primary.

To accuse Senator Clinton outright of being a congenital liar in the pursuit of power for it’s own sake would of course engage in just the kind of tear down that Obama stands against. To let it go, though, when all of the evidence is in would be the mark of a loser. Not only does Obama want to win but he needs to show that he can win to convince democratic voters. Thus, it is necessary at some point for him to go after Clinton’s major weakness.

Senator Obama is now able to fully engage Senator Clinton on this issue without seeming to do so in bad taste. When Clinton’s Bosnia lie finally fluoresced into an all out media backlash (after weeks in which she stood by the “fairy tale”), Obama stood silent. He did the honorable thing in doing so and letting her explain what happened. Was he rewarded when he made a bad choice of words while seeking to explain why a natural constituency for democrats, small town folks who are down on their luck, votes republican and “cling” to guns and religion (and making a point Bill Clinton himself made to Charlie Rose in December)?

The Clinton campaign rushed into what it saw as a media bloodletting (no doubt ready to attack the media as biased if they too did not rip into Obama) and called him an elitist and accused him of being out of touch. In doing so, out trotted congenital liar Hillary Clinton’s confabulations, this time talking about her long time love of guns and going duck hunting with her father. Now, it may be that she did this. But who is going to believe her? Senator Obama gave a sharp answer, calling Senator Clinton on both her attacks and her strange sounding claims:

I expected this out of John McCain. But I’ve got to say, I’m a little disappointed when I start hearing the exact same talking points coming out of my Democratic colleague Hillary Clinton. She knows better. She knows better, shame on her. Shame on her. She knows better!

Hillary Clinton’s out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packin’ a six shooter! Come on! She knows better. That’s some politics being played by Hillary Clinton. I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blinds.

No-one should predict what is going to be a close call next week. But personally, I think that not only will Pennsylvania be close, it may be Clinton’s Waterloo, or her Stalingrad, whatever you want to call it. The moment that Senator Obama feels comfortable calling her directly on the fact that she has campaigned like Karl Rove (stealing her “shame on you” lines) and earned a deserved reputation as a congenital liar, this campaign has now, finally, turned its last decisive corner.