There is a growing consensus that Mrs. Clinton is playing out the string, primary-wise, that she (like we) can see the writing on the wall and it does not include a convention acceptance speech. (This, BTW, might explain her recent rhetorical mood swings.)
But even if Obama is now the overwhelming favorite there is still urgency for him to win Texas and Ohio, as my friend Jack Farrell argues over on RobertEmmet. Jack, a veteran political reporter with whom I used work at The Boston Globe, argues that Obama needs to close out Clinton so that he can start to define himself before the GOP makes it all about lapel flag-pins. He brings some historical perspective:
In 1988, I spent some time as a journalist with the Dukakis campaign. When it became clear that the Democrats were blowing their opportunity to claim the White House, I asked some of his aides and advisers why the campaign had never developed a compelling message, and allowed the Republicans to define their man.
"We had a message," one of them told me. "It was Tuesdays."
Tuesdays, as in primary election days. Dukakis spent that spring making headlines on Tuesdays as he drove Jesse Jackson, Al Gore and the other Democratic candidates from the race.
Sound familiar?
The Dukakis campaign staff were pretty smart guys and gals - a bunch of Ivy League brains with a touch of Boston muscle. But they became convinced, over the course of all those Tuesdays, that they were a breed of political geniuses.
Success can inebriate -- and cause a campaign to lose its edge. Get comfortable and you start to dismiss things like flag pins and such as minor and easily ignored. Then you get SwiftHorton'd.