Informed Speculation

While I still insist the he has NOT clinched the nomination, it will take a major, major turn of events to derail Barack Obama at this point.  I have been cautious, perhaps overly so, in dismissing the might of the Clinton machine, but connections and power can only take you so far – at some point you have to win votes.  I think Hillary is running on fumes at the moment.

What can she take hope in, if anything?  Well, she can look outside her party at the carcass of the McCain campaign…we all remember that everyone, myself included, wrote him off as dead (of course, that was BEFORE the voting started and the spectacular implosion of the disastrous Giuliani strategy).  And she can take a very small, even desperate-seeming bit of solace in the continued unfolding of the Rezko scandal…but so far, that story hasn’t landed on the general public’s radar screen (speaking of scandals, the New York Times has hit another new low, ‘breaking’ a story of an eight-year-old relationship between a lobbyist and John McCain that is filled with rumors and innuendo and no proof of impropriety of any sort.  It smells of hatchet job, and the liberal blogosphere will make sure it gets plenty of oxygen over the next several news cycles, but it seems there is little ‘there’ there – but like the Obama/Rezko connection, it shows, at the least, poor judgement in choosing associates).

With the Clintons, though, you learn to never say never…I remember when the Lewinsky scandal broke, and the talking heads were saying he wouldn’t last through the week.  And I persist in my belief that Obama’s team is overconfident.

But yes, he is the frontrunner now, there is no question.  The Democratic slot (and perhaps the election) is his to lose…