The big loss in North Carolina and the close win in Indiana put the handwriting on the wall for the Clintons in particular, the Democrats as a group and perhaps the nation as a whole.
Barack Obama will run in the fall and given the popularity of the current administration, you’d have to say he’s the odds-on favorite to become your next President.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell got in trouble for bringing it up, but the fact is that some voters won’t pull the lever for Obama because of the color of his skin.
Because it’s ugly doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Heck there are probably voters who wouldn’t vote for a woman, either.
But I can’t imagine either group making a dent in the tide of voters calling for a change, those who see John McCain as simply a more noble form of the current leadership.
Sure, Clinton will carry the fight into early June, into places like West Virginia and Montana and Oregon.
Her staff will make remarks about another stolen race with Florida and Michigan voters excluded from the process.
They’ll argue to super delegates that Obama still can’t win the big ones, saying that a D who can’t carry Ohio or Pennsylvania can’t win the White House.
But I can’t see those super delegates; the same party leaders who howled at the moon after George Bush lost the popular vote but won the election in 2000, stealing the nomination away from the guy who goes into the convention with the most votes.
And make no mistake.
Barack Obama will go into the convention with the most popular votes.
It wasn’t an easy run.
The presumptive nominee had to endure the whisper campaign that urged voters to wonder if “Obama” sounded too much like “Osama.”
Then there’s the Reverend Wright, the preacher who seems hell-bent to get his fifteen minutes of fame at the expense of his most famous former worshipper.
Hillary Clinton is in West Virginia vowing to fight on, but somebody somewhere has got to be considering a graceful exit strategy about now.
It was one helluva fight, one that may be remembered long after, and even better than the one coming in November.