He's Finished

I've been up to my neck at work and was only able to hear snippets of Obama's big speech on Tuesday. As everyone has said, the speech was fantastic, but will it be effective in regaining the momentum that Obama lost after the Reverend Wright comments were made public? I seriously doubt it. For all of Obama's efforts to stay above it, Reverend Wright did what the Clintons were not able to do to him. They turned him into "the black candidate". They turned him into a hybrid of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And by giving this speech, which in many ways was necessary, he has fed the narrative that he's now the candidate whose campaign is all about race. Despite the fawning reviews by his cheerleaders on cable news, I can't see how the "waitress grandmas" in Ohio and Pennsylvania, who insist they'll vote for John McCain if Obama gets the nomination, will be persuaded by anything Obama said....or anything he might say from this day forward. They may in fact be more disconnected from Obama after the speech, distancing themselves from the rhetorical parallel of Wright's words with those of the stereotypical "crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner" who makes a throwaway racial epithet. Through little fault of his own, Obama's ability to persuade Hillary's voters to his side is likely gone forever.....and I knew this would happen if Obama became the nominee.

The conventional wisdom remains that, in the words of Dick Morris, "this thing is over". Superdelegates will never dare overturn the will of the people and hand the nomination to Hillary. I'm not nearly as sure of that as I was even three days ago. I suspect Obama will continue to lose ground, despite media proclamations of his inevitable resurgence following the speech, and he'll be heading into the convention looking much weaker against McCain than Hillary does. I would give Hillary at least a 50% chance of winning the nomination at this point, even though I maintain she'd still do more long-term damage to the Democratic Party than Obama if she was the nominee.

Either way, it seems pretty obvious to me that John McCain will be America's 44th President. The only lingering suspense is what wedge issue Republicans will exploit to convince working people to vote against their interests in the 2012 election.