When Hillary Clinton wins the North Carolina and the Oregon primaries, I will take seriously the possibility she might be able to convince the 7 or 8 out of 10 out-standing “Super-delegates” necessary to grant her the nomination.  In the meantime, I figure yesterday’s Pennsylvania result as somewhat tedious, and seemingly tapped in stone six weeks ago.  Note that the margin of victory (and after “Bitter” and after Wright) was the same as the margin of victory for demographically similar Ohio, which I suppose combined with her phantom victory in lieu of what would probably be a (slimmer) real victory in Florida I guess would be the pointer to the Super-delegates of the trio of Swing-states for the question “Why can’t he close the deal?”

Actually, we largely just sort of have an interesting sociological painting of the Democratic Party, statewide, regional, and nation-wide, worthy of study and squinting.  Here is another wearisome lesson in Democracy, in regards to how the electorate is sliced and diced and coralled.  Anyone who believes that Obama’s San Francisco duo words of “bitter” and “clinging” had no effect and don’t portend to a problem in the General election is fooling him/herself.  But recognize that Hillary Clinton in the 1990s used the word “idiots” instead, which I gather would have shifted the electoral calculus around if uttered in the year 2008 and made the salt-of-the-earth fictional bits about her dear hunting grandpa a bit harder to toss out.

The general election match up polling has seen McCain draw even or slightly ahead of Obama, and clearly ahead of Clinton, which has garnered the commentary about the dangers of this prolonged primary struggle (to end in this inevitable, though oft delayed, Obama nomination).  I tend to see the glass half full in this equation, which is that Obama will go into the General Election with a clearer idea of his electoral fault lines.  They are rather predictable and run to the “out of touch (cultural) Liberal Elitist”, with the “Flag” problem returning out of the 1988 election, and with a smattering of Race politics added.  Reagan Democrats, previously Nixon Democrats, to a good extent previously Eisenhower Democrats, and God I wish I could but I can’t use the antecedent of Hoover Democrats.  (The problem there is that in his landslide defeat, Smith lined up and corralled the ethnic Catholic vote, and all those next three elected Republican presidents tapped that voting block.  However, I did see an echo into the shenanigans Hoover pulled in breaking the “Solid South” with this story.)

I suggest that the Reverend Wright controversy blew up at the optimum time for Obama, inasmuch as it gave some recovery time to end the Pennsylvania primary at its pre-ordained margin of defeat, and inasmuch as it did not lead to any additional Hillary Clinton victories which might have flipped their position, and inasmuch as it will be old news for the General Election, albeit old news the McCain campaign will mine and old news which has seeped into the conciousness of the parts of the public apt to regard it as terribly problematic.

The polling fade and the clear electoral fault-lines should have everyone rooting or working for an Obama vicctory on pins and needles.  But the lead through 2007 and the beginning of 2008 came prior to Obama’s cultural-political fault-lines being exposed.  The current rough tie is at a stage where McCain’s liabilities are not being exposed.  The current president sits at the lowest approval rating in recorded history, a feat he has been at or nearly at for over a year now.  He has shown a dissonance far greater than Obama’s “Bitter” comment regarding the economy (or should be — I recognize the cultural debris surrounding this), insisting we are not in a Recession — and more to the point these sentiments are being echoed by John McCain.  I suggest the problem with the new DNC ad is that does not intersperse Bush into the McCain flutters.  McCain has pointedly insisted that there “are going to be more wars”, has sang the first chords of “Bomb Iran”, and referenced “1,000 Years” in terms of our stay in Iraq.  His quick temper and hot-headedness are legendary and noted among his Republican colleagues, and his age surfaces as his gaffes run the line of “Senior Moments”.

Whatever Obama’s faultlines to be exploited, McCain has more.  Also the fundamentals favor the Democratic Party — dynamics which favored Bush in 2004 and only slightly favored Gore in 2000.  Go down ticket, and you find that Mary Landrieu leades her opponent in poll numbers by roughly the same margin Elizabeth Dole leads her opponent.  The difference between these two races is that Landrieu’s is the most likely Democratic seat to be picked off by the Republicans, Dole’s is about the tenth most likely Republican seat to be picked off by the Democrats.  A similar dynamic is working its way in the House of Representatives.

It is entirely possible that we will look back in November and shrug off an easy or landslide victory by Obama as rather inevitable, such that you look back at reports from old land-slide elections and laugh at the “close election” fretterings.  But, then again, one look at those 45 minute delay in the debate to an actual policy question shows that Obama’s electoral pit-falls can land him on the other side of that coin.  For Obama, it is better that it be laid bare in front of him so he can proceed and be less apt to be blind-sided by such debris.

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