Indiana and North Carolina (Updated)

11: 00 AM PT: Hoosiers and Tarheels, lend me your ears. Please, please, please put this desperate, flailing, power-crazed and craven Clinton campaign out of its misery, and put the rest of the country in a position in which it can move forward. Is it too much too ask? Why put off the inevitable? The sooner the Clintons fall into the background only rarely to be heard from again the better off we all shall be. Vote for the future.  Give the superdelegates the pretext they are looking for to come out for Obama.  And let's move on.

Usually we have to hold our noses and settle for the less horrible choice, but this year we have another possibility. You can put an end to even the slightest possibility of staying stuck in this politics as usual if you can just bring yourself to send Clinton packing.

***

UPDATED 10:30 PM PT: I was busy most of the evening so didn't pay close attention to the unfolding of the vote count.  I guess I'm mostly relieved at the results. It's a good night for Obama. Let's hope the results tonight embolden reticent superdelegates to come out for Obama and funders to back away from Clinton.

I saw snatches of Hillary's speech, and it was interesting to look at Bill standing behind her. He was a million miles away, and it's probably clear to him now, if it wasn't before, that there is no hope, no argument, no reason to keep on. Let's all hope as the reality sinks in over the next week, and that they will back off and let the country take the next step forward.

Comments

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

Given the current state of their revered college basketball programs, it makes sense that the Tar Heels will excel, and that the Hoosiers won't enhance their reputation.

[Guy Fawkes]

http://208.76.84.21/thefield/?p=1160

That says it all.

[Jason]

I've noted before that Democratic primary voters, for a variety of reasons, just didn't seem to be able to be the ones to close the door on the Clintons. NH kept her alive, then the Super Tuesday states, then OH, then PA. I think time has finally run out.

What was hilarious last night was watching Tim Russert and Chris Matthews and their ilk -- who have been disingenuously pretending that Clinton had a realistic chance of the nomination because it was in the media's self interest to keep the race going -- suddenly be forced to confront what Chuck Todd and anyone else who has been even remotely paying attention has known for two months: it's all over but the crying.

[Jason]

P.S. -- Hopefully Terry McAuliffe will also get put out to pasture for good in the next few days. I'd hoped we'd seen the last of his weaselly countenance after he presided over the 2004 debacle. That he's been back now was Exhibit A for the riff-raff that the Clintons planned to drag back to Washington with them.

[Jack Whelan]

Despite knowing that it has been over for some time now, it's so nice that the media finally has given up on Hillary. In addition to knowing it's over, now we can feel it's over. Even if Hillary persists, she will not be taken seriously.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

It makes the charade of the past two months--since Ohio/Texas, when the delegate math became overwhelmingly clear and the calendar shrank--that much more outrageous, wasteful and shameful.

My brother and a lot of other normally sane people have been genuinely and deeply worried about Obama winning the NOMINATION (forget the general). That their blood pressure and other vitals were needlessly worsened over a two-month stretch shows just how deep media manipulation and political thuggery can affect people, and it just makes me sick at the deepest, most solid core of my being.

Everything I've given my life to--political involvement, the prophetic religious voice, journalism--stands in complete disarray, largely if not totally misunderstood and/or ignored in today's America (and I've also given much of my life to sports, but that's another matter).

There's no joy in this for me. The media writing off Hillary now only magnifies the outrage, because the delegate math was already set in stone, and only ridiculous outcomes (i.e., Hillary winning PA and Indiana by 25-30 points and NC being a small Clinton win) could have genuinely altered the trajectory of this thing.

Meanwhile, common folk are immersed in the Rev. Wright and this gutter-ball race to the bottom, as personality and vibe dominate the coverage to the total exclusion of real policy considerations.

It's just a ghastly, beginning-to-end train wreck, and few to no people are willing to call it for what it is, with the media wanting to inflate/exaggerate/prop up a false sense of drama in order to get ratings and profits.

The darkness, even with this good night for Obama, is substantial. Moreover, we all know that the upcoming general election is going to be even worse than this Democratic race, which--given the poison and blackness we've seen--is a frankly breathtaking statement to make.

All I can say to the ATF community of readers is to do what's doable and in front of you each day. Use your tax rebates for the good of your family if you're in financial peril; use it for charitable/justice-based ends if you're appreciably affluent. Do anything other than giving President Bush what he wants: mindless shopping on entertainment/luxury/bread-and-circuses.

[Jack Whelan]

Geez, Matt. I was feeling pretty good this morning--optimistic and looking forward with a sense of future possibility.

I'm a glass half-full guy when it comes to Obama. He seems to have enough of an inner light that he seems very effectively to dispel all the shadowy stuff. In the long run that's the only way you fight it effectively --by shining a light on it, and most sane people will get it. Some more quickly than others, but they will get it, and that's what bodes well for Obama in the coming years. He wears well. He wins people over as they get to know him and see that he's the real deal.

That's the really encouraging thing about last night. Obama could have lost both races by double digits because of the pandering and the mud, but he came out of this strong. If he lost badly last night, we could all say that the numbers still favor him to win the nomination, but it would have meant he goes into the race wounded with big question marks.

The country is not responding to Obama that way. He's come through this very well. It's hard to imagine how he could have handled it better. I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing and about the country and its prospects to take the next step.

It's probably my own biases talking here, but I think beating Hillary will have proved more difficult than beating McCain. I find it hard to believe that there are many people outside a small committed coterie who felt that passionately committed to Hillary. The Main Street voters who seemed to be her hardcore constituency are for the most part low-information voters who cast their ballot for the more familiar brand. Most of those will be fairly easily won over. The Republicans will throw their mud, but it won't stick, and I'm convinced that McCain is so flawed and that the Obama people are adept enough to exploit those flaws that we have every reason to start thinking about what an Obama presidency should start focusing on.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

I'd say two things off the top, without getting into nuance or using appreciable length:

1) We've seen this movie before (i.e., expecting enough sane people to do the sane thing in a presidential election this decade).

2) Most of the states Obama has won in the primaries will, in a general election, have a vastly different calculus, not just because of a rearranged racial dynamic, but because there won't be caucuses, which Obama's campaign masterfully exploited against Clinton. In a one-person-one-vote situation, the nature of the playing field changes.

(North Carolina could very well be the new Florida this year in the Electoral College, in addition to the regular battlegrounds of MI, PA, OH, FL and MO.)

[Jack Whelan]

Matt, Everything you say is historically true, but I agree with Budkowsky here:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050708a.html

I think we're finally turning a corner and the old politics simply will not work. Obama has proven it doesn't have to.
Obama is not Dukakis or Gore or Kerry. Even David Brooks says this morning: "The upshot is that McCain will have no choice but to run an untraditional campaign. Anything that smacks of traditional Republican tactics or philosophy will go down in flames."

Brooks talks about how Obama has been pushed to the left in the last several weeks, but with Hillary out of the way, it will be easy enough for him to fill the vacuum her absence will create. McCain is undisciplined and old, profoundly inconsistent and not widely liked outside some media circles. This is not 2000 or 2004. The game has changed.

It's all about the sane people in the middle, and given the choice between the awful flip-flopping McCain and the charisma, consistency and substantiveness of Obama, I see this as a fairly easy win for Obama. There will be down moments in the next six months, but enough people are awake now to the abuses of the GOP, that no sane person is going to buy that song anymore. Are there plenty of crazies out there? Yes, but they're not even close to 51%.

Guy, ditto. But from now on I don't even want to hear mentioned even as the remotest possibility that Hillary will be on the ticket. To me that would be the equivalent of Gore's putting Lieberman on his ticket--worse, even.

[Guy Fawkes]

Last night was indeed a relief, and in Indiana, almost a huge thrill.

Nevertheless, although Obama seems just about inevitable now, I'm concerned about the old Democratic demon: allowing yourself to be defined before you can define your opponent.

David Axelrod (Obama's architect) seems to be making noises that they will be campaigning in general mode very, very soon. Well, that's not soon enough. John McCain's free ride needs to end NOW.

He needs to be made to look old, out of touch, clueless on policy, and like Bush III. He needs to be made to look warmongering, unstable, puny, you name it.

Obama can fight while looking bigger than his opponent. Having a vision doesn't mean your vision has to be toothless. He must do it now. He cannot wait. The GOP already are lining up to hold on desperately to whatever scraps are left of the electorate that are uninformed, delusional, timid, scared or fat and happy as a result of Bush's cronyism.

And Clinton, if she knows what's good for her, should concede and give full-throated support to Obama. He may not put her on the ticket, but he'll have something for her, I know it--because her tenacity and pugnacity have their place in politics and even in Democratic politics. Just not in 21st century Presidential Politics.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

The one thing that could break this race wide open is McCain having a senior moment (or a tantrum, or both) in a debate, and that's an entirely plausible prospect.

But if McCain is disciplined, this is a 3am election night.

Remember, as you have said time and again (especially on occasions when I was still thinking that the seemingly impossible couldn't happen):

voters are not rational creatures making rational decisions.

This is a reptilian brain country. Moreover, it seems fairly clear that a lot of Republicans voted in the Dem primaries (much more so than the other way around), and that a lot of culturally conservative "downscale" independents/Democrats in the battleground states have--despite being exposed to Obama--refused to buy what Barack is selling.

I know that Jack Whelan hasn't been hopeful very often over the past few years (I've been right there with you in the bunker, of course!), and Lord knows, I hope I'm proven loud wrong about all this, but with the media being what it is; with people having the short attention spans they in fact possess; with the prolonged Democratic fight shrinking the calendar to the extent that the two tickets, veeps included, will have comparatively less time together (especially for the Dems); and with the end of the Republican Convention being on Labor Day (very late for a convention by recent standards), we really have a lot less time than is usually the case in a presidential election.

If there's no McCain gaffe, the racial poison injected into this campaign will pull enough "What's the Matter With Kansas" type voters back into the Republican column, and we'll have another 50-50 squeaker, with the Electoral College accordingly close.

If there's no major McCain gaffe, I'd bet my entire savings (which is a mere $800, so don't get your hopes too high) that the race will be within 5 percentage points, maybe 6 tops, with Obama maxing out at 360 E.C. votes.

A more likely assessment for a gaffe-free McCain campaign would be 50.5-49.5, with the electoral college winner having no more than 300.

The next big step is the veep selections. Then I might reassess, but unless we have a wow factor (positive or negative on one side), I wouldn't be inclined to change my predictions.

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

You make a good glass-half-empty case. But me being the irrational sort I describe most voters to be, I just want to indulge in the optimism. As you point out, it's not something I've felt much of in the last eight years. But I honestly do believe we are turning a page here.

We're watching now as a new song is being born. That doesn't mean that all the bad old music is going away, just that it won't be the dominant theme. Kerry lost because there was no song--so did the 2000 edition of Al Gore.

Obama's song was hard to hear in the beginning, and even now a lot of people have a hard time hearing it because of all the other noise in the background. Some never will hear it, and others who do hear it will try their best to drown it out--but it is growing stronger, and it's not going away. Obama may win only by the skin of his teeth, but he will win, and that's all that matters. That guarantess the song gets a fair hearing, and that we move on.