What a difference a week makes!

Last week I was afraid that Hillary's momentum spelled ruin for the Democratic chances in the Fall. Barack's victory in NC and slight loss in Indiana was slightly below his performance as I predicted two weeks ago. But his substantial meeting of my (and other's) previous expectations of two weeks ago, after the most bruising couple of weeks of his campaign means that he was able to push back and be resilient against the Clinton machine. I have to agree that the gas tax may have done Hillary in. Tuesday extended Obama's delegate lead. What I didn't anticipate was that the media and much of the Democratic party leadership would declare the end of the Clinton campaign and call Barack the presumptive nominee. As much as I'm an Obama supporter, and as much as I loved hearing it, I'm not sure Tim Russert was exactly acting in his most professional journalistic capacity when he declared Obama the nominee on late Tuesday night. I've been supporting campaigns that are too often on the short end of the stick when the mainstream media declares an issue important or an election over. This means the superdelegate floodgates have begun to creek open and Obama could have the nomination in-hand in May or early June. This is something that needed to happen for the sake of party unity.

It is not mathematically impossible for Hillary to win (just extremely difficult). So, I can understand if she wants to stay in until it is mathematically impossible, as Huckabee did, but she should campaign like Huckabee did in the final days (no attacks on Obama).

I am somewhat concerned that the media is rumoring that the Obama campaign will declare victory on May 20 (when the Oregon and Kentucky primaries would put Obama over the majority of elected delegate threshhold. This is only because Oregon is a mail-in state, and if it works like Washington's mail-in balloting, ballots must only be postmarked by election day, meaning thousands of ballots will come in after election day and counting won't be done for at least a few days afterwards. On that Tuesday the only election sure to have been called will be Kentucky, which will be in Clinton's favor in all likelihood. That would be a prime time for Clinton to withdraw with grace. I am not convinced that Obama should pay Clinton's campaign debts, but I suppose that if that is the cost of party unity, then it would be a small price to pay.

All in all, it's been a good week for our family. Obama is being declared the presumptive nominee, Merinda landed a new job managing a Babystyle store, Maggie does not have a cold, flu, or ear infection (though she did get a diaper rash this week), and I won a case that was completely my baby on Friday.

Incidentally, this will be the first election in my lifetime where the nominee I supported will be the nominee of the party (other than 1996; when Bill Clinton didn't have a challenger for the nomination.) In 2000 I supported Bill Bradley, who lost to Gore, and I ended up voting Nader. (Before the stone throwing commences, I was in Utah, which wasn't exactly a swing-state.) In 2004, I was a Dean man.