Obama's 'Primary' Concern

If nothing else, at least the carpet-bombing coverage of the Obama-Wright (I'm not even sure what to call it; it's no longer a story and it's never been a scandal) ... main event? ... has silenced the partisan multitudes who once noisily proclaimed that all the media cards were unfairly stacked against their candidate. That, so their woeful story went, was the chief if not singular cause of their candidate's diminishing fortunes.

All other reasonable, thoughtful explanations -- e.g., the Clinton camp's failure to plan for democracy after Super Tuesday, or Obama's momentum that built on his camp's having keenly chosen the right message of "change" -- were dismissed in favor of the easiest punching bag: the biased media; they were all against her from the get-go, she never had a chance.

What's more, we were lectured, the media would never challenge the prejudicially anointed one: the senator from Illinois (not the other senator from Illinois, as well as New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and -- wait, it's coming -- Puerto Rico). It was all part of some dark, conspiratorial scheme hatched by white-male journalistic poobahs to promote a black community organizer to the White House. Yes, that was "the plan." They knew it and could feel it in their pro-Clinton bones.

This, I should hope, has been a cautionary tale, for it should be clear by now that blaming the media for one's favorite candidate's grave reversal of fortunes is always a risky business. Because the worm always turns. Yesterday it was Hillary Clinton's turn. Today it's Barack Obama's. Tomorrow it will be John McCain's.

Who else but the illuminated frontrunner is going to attract all those pesky media bugs?

At any rate, that's a debate -- a fruitless one, it seems to me -- for the political history books. Because behind the curtain of all this media hoopla of "Wright said this" so "Obama said that," etc., etc., the referees, it appears, have already called the game -- and they've done so only according to its rules.

It remains a high mathematical improbability, which is fast approaching an absolute impossibility, for Clinton to surpass Obama in the pledged-delegate count. After Tuesday, we'll be that much closer to the impossible stage. And, as Clinton-operative Terry McAuliffe reminded us before folks started actually choosing delegates, it is, after all, a delegate-numbers game.

Upon crunching those numbers -- that is, after adding Obama's already committed-superdelegate count to his existing pledged-delegate count plus the additional delegates he's conservatively projected to pick up through June -- one discovers that he needs only about 100 of the remaining, uncommitted superdelegates to achieve lift off, which is to say, the nomination.

There are about 280 of these remaining superdelegates; hence Obama needs only about one-third of them, or, as logic would have it, Clinton needs two-thirds. If any "fact" of life explains why Obama has seemed a trifle less exercised about the Wright affair than the rest of the universe, that's it. He is sitting pretty, and of this he is well aware.

This morning's New York Times: "Despite a series of trials that have put Mr. Obama on the defensive and illustrated the burdens he might carry in a fall campaign, the Obama campaign is rolling along, leaving Mrs. Clinton with dwindling options."

Wednesday's Politico: "Capitol Hill insiders say the battle for congressional superdelegates is over....

"While more than 80 Democrats in the House and Senate have yet to state their preferences in the race for the Democratic nomination, sources said Tuesday that most of them have already made up their minds and have told the campaigns where they stand."

This quite possibly is why the Clinton camp recently has made noises about a June, rather than August, game-ending decision. It has crunched and tried its best to influence the numbers, but, in the end, which appears to be upon us, they are what they are and there's little left for the Clinton campaign to change in its favor.

Said (in my opinion, excellent vice-presidential pick) Sen. Claire McCaskill: "The majority of superdelegates I’ve talked to are committed, but it is a matter of timing. They’re just preferring to make their decision public after the primaries are over."

And her final, three little words that should lift the hearts of Obama supporters everywhere? "Asked which way the committed-but-unannounced superdelegates are leaning, McCaskill -- who has endorsed Obama -- said: 'James Brown would say, 'I Feel Good.'"

As, I imagine, does Barack Obama, despite all the media's megalomaniacal fuss of late, which is sure to trail off onto some other sensationalistic new toy in good time. The Wright affair is now a general-election problem but no longer a primary one -- in both senses of the word.

If anything, given McCain's own simmering "Hagee problem," he'll go after Obama for his "clinging" comment before pressing his luck on Wright. In yet another, tiresome American "values" election, McCain's gold lies in them thar ultraliberal San Fransisco hills littered with anti-gun and (perceived) anti-religion sentiment that Obama played right into.

And that, I also imagine, in its adjectival sense, is Obama's primary concern.