Wait! Before you chuckle and turn the
page, know this:

I mean it. I am 100% in earnest here.

There. Now I've done it, you are thinking: Drunk the dregs of the Kool-Aid. Entered full-scale denial mode. Severed the last fleeting threads that tethered me to objective reality.

I know. In the real world, Barack Obama got clobbered, absolutely pasted by Hillary Clinton last night, losing by the breathtaking margin of 67%-26%. Not counting Arkansas, he never lost anything like this badly before. How could anyone in their right mind honestly spin this as a good night?

I'll give six reasons, plus a bonus seventh reason based on events that happened this morning.

1. Ain't nowhere for Obama to go from here but up. The narrative next week becomes more positive, and not only because it almost by definition has to. Obama will lose by a lot in Kentucky, but not ear as bad as in West Virginia. He will win Oregon by about the same margin he loses Kentucky. That will give him an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, and that in turn will bring the "Pelosi club" superdelegates off the fence.

2. Obama learned what happens when you don't show up for an election. What happens is, you lose, badly. Following his big NC win, Obama took a casual victory lap, barely showing his face in West Virginia in the two weeks before they voted. Here comes my one article of blind faith, as opposed to reasoned observation: He won't make that mistake again.

3. West Virginia is the White equivalent of D.C. If Jesse Jackson won a late primary in D.C., the rest of the party would take that for what it was worth. I realize it would probably infuriate the good voters of West Virginia to hear this, but the rest of the country largely discounts their "Hill/Bill-y" perspective. Everybody needs to remember that Hillary Clinton is an "identity" candidate in this race, as much as Barack Obama is. No -- more so: He is consciously reaching out to the Democratic constituencies that he hasn't persuaded, while she is targeting her appeal more narrowly, toward the voters she already has.

4. West Virginia didn't vote against Barack Obama; they voted for Hillary Clinton. It's true that a lot of petulant Clinton supporters insist in exit polls that they would vote for McCain, or not at all, unless their candidate is nominated. Forgive me, folks, but this is a little like a 4-year-old's threat that if he doesn't get what he wants, he'll just hold his breath till he turns blue. It's just not something a serious Democrat would say. (And yes, that goes equally for the smaller portion of Obama supporters who wouldn't vote for Clinton if she were to be the nominee.) Anyway, come November none of this is goimg to happen, because:
   

5. Hillary has said she will work hard on behalf of the Party's nominee. Yes, she's still running hard, but she's not cheap-shotting Obama the way she was earlier in the campaign ("Shame on you, Barack Obama!") And she has signaled in both her Indiana and her West Virginia victory speeches, that she knows Obama will be the nominee, and she will work for him.
   

6. We won another very red House seat. In a Mississippi district that went 62% for Bush, the Democrat, Travis Childers, won last night. And not just won -- won going away. Childers won 54% of the vote, even with the Republicans pulling out their big guns -- Dick Cheney, Haley Barbour -- and running ads that tried to tie Childers to Obama. This was the biggest news of the evening. It clearly foretells that this could well be a swing election of historic proportions. Even before last night, Newt Gingrich was warning that this was likely to be a disastrous election for the GOP. This morning Republican incumbents by the dozens have got to be suffering indigestion, and the uncommitted Democratic superdelegates, many of whom are House members themselves, have to be breathing easier.

If Hillary Clinton had any secret cache of superdelegates to release, this morning would have been the time to start trotting them out. Here is my seventh bit of excellent news for Obama: It didn't happen. She gained only one super endorsement (from a Tennessee add-on), while Obama picked up 2-1/2 more votes. Hillary's superdelegate death by a thousand cuts continues.

In short, on what was arguably his worst election night of the campaign, Obama's chances of being nominated have hardly budged. I'd rate them 99.5% today, versus 99.8% yesterday. And his chances of winning in November -- and perhaps even getting an overwhelming electoral mandate -- are notably better today than they were at the beginning of the week.