Thank you, North Carolina

Thank you for giving Barack Obama the big night he needed to move beyond Jeremiah Wright and get back to wrapping up this Democratic nomination. As for Indiana, well, nice try, though I (like Brad Friedman) wonder about the impact of at least 43,000 Indiana voters who were robbed by the state government of Indiana and the United States Supreme Court of their right to vote.

If Obama's opponent were anyone but someone named "Clinton", we could wrap this thing up today and get down to the hard work of beating John McCain, a task that shouldn't be underestimated despite the fact that not only does McCain not know the difference between Shia and Sunni, he also isn't aware that the League of Nations was disbanded in 1946, and has forgotten that Czechoslovakia was split into two countries in January 1993. But said opponent IS named Clinton, and while her speech last night was marginally more conciliatory than she's been in the past, she is insisting on changing the rules midstream and allowing the Florida and Michigan delegations to be seated as they are, with no compromise.

What this party needs to do now is to make sure that even if these delegations are seated, this is over. Joe Sudbay is passing along a report this morning that Wesley Clark is doing his part by urging Hillary Clinton to drop out. The math at this point is clear -- Obama will lead the popular vote, he'll lead in pledged delegates, and the super delegates now have to shit or get off the pot.

Perhaps the most hopeful sign in this whole thing is that I have had Morning Joe on on front of me for the last 40 minutes and and the name "Wright" hasn't been mentioned once. But when you look at the breakdown, Obama has his work cut out for him. In North Carolina, fully 52% of Clinton voters say at this moment that they won't vote for him. I suspect the Indiana numbers are similar. The racial divide is tremendous, with seniors, rural white voters, and white voters without college not being sold. I think that if Obama reaches out to those seniors, many of whom are elderly Jews who still think that he's a Muslim or were frightened by the video images of his pastor, he can win them over once they realize he's neither a terrorist nor a Scary Negro™. The rural and low-information voters are another story, largely because these are the voters most susceptible to the media's mad love affair with John McCain and the degree to which the talking heads of cable news get their information from right-wing blogs that focus on everything EXCEPT policy issues.

But for now, this ludicrous show goes on, despite Tim Russert saying it's over:

The question now is just how long the bigwigs in the party are going to be willing to let Hillary Clinton damage the party's nominee. Clinton can still find redemption if she can somehow put her ego back into its cage. She can drop out and put her formidable strength behind Obama, perhaps with a promise of a high-level Cabinet position or the leadership of the Senate. And in no time at all everyone will forget what she's put us through.

But somehow I think that's not going to happen.