RALEIGH, N.C. – Barack Obama, propelled to within touching distance of the Democratic nomination by an emphatic win in North Carolina and a stronger-than-expected showing in Indiana, made light of Hillary Clinton’s hopes for a “game-changing” result during his victory speech here last night.

“Today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.,” Obama told a large crowd at NCSU’s Reynolds Coliseum.  read more »

Tuesday was a decisive night for Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton won Indiana, barely, giving her as many states on the day as Obama got.

But the result made clear one thing: It doesn't matter anymore.

Ever since she fell hopelessly behind Obama in the pledged-delegate and popular-vote counts during a string of February defeats, Clinton has clung to a long-shot nomination strategy. She would not be able to overtake him in delegates or popular votes in the late primaries, but she could use them to shake Democrats’ confidence in Obama as a general-election candidate.

This would mean winning overwhelmingly in the late states where she was favored and picking off some or all of those that he had been expected to win. Only then, with Clinton making a compelling case that Obama’s supporters were abandoning him in droves, would superdelegates—loath to overturn “the will of the people” and to risk the devastating intraparty warfare that would come from thwarting an African-American who won a pledged-delegate majority in the primaries—be receptive to lining up with her en masse.

To Clinton’s credit, she strung this all out longer than many thought she could. She won in Ohio and Texas on March 4, when defeat would have meant the end for her. Then she pulled out Pennsylvania on April 22, and suddenly the wind seemed to be at her back. She began receiving a hearing from some opinion-makers on her specious “big state” argument and her questions about Obama’s seeming inability to connect with white working-class voters (something that made the coverage of Jeremiah Wright’s untimely reemergence all the more devastating for him). For the first time since January, Clinton picked up a new batch of superdelegate endorsements and when she latched onto a gas-tax-holiday plan and began bashing “elitists,” game-changing wins in Indiana and North Carolina suddenly became plausible.  read more »

Barack Obama's campaign just released the remarks he's prepared for tonight's primary night rally in Raleigh, N.C., in which he said his campaign stands "less than two hundred delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination ...."

He called Hillary Clinton a "formidable opponent," and congratulated her for her victory in Indiana, and expressed confidence that the party would be united come November.

The full speech follows:  read more »

Barack Obama is winning. North Carolina is his, comfortably, and his delegate-count continues to climb ever closer to a requisite primary-ending majority.

So why has his campaign felt like a long march over broken glass?

“It is painful to watch,” said an influential Obama supporter and delegate in an interview the day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. “It’s exhausting for everyone involved. It’s exhausting for Barack and Michelle. It’s exhausting for all the campaign staff, and I know it’s exhausting for the supporters.”  read more »

A pair of outright wins by Hillary Clinton on Tuesday could prompt immediate chaos, with already-jittery Democrats questioning anew Barack Obama’s general election viability and Clinton potentially moving into position to run the table in the remaining contests and to reverse some of the crucial metrics that have favored Obama and sustained his perceived inevitability for nearly three months.

Conversely, a pair of outright Obama wins would almost instantly end the Democratic fight, with previously uncommitted superdelegates interpreting an Obama victory on Clinton turf as cause to step in  read more »

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – In a long, impassioned speech last night, Michelle Obama tried one last time before the primary here to combat the idea that she and her husband were elitists, and excoriated Hillary Clinton for her gas-tax “holiday” proposal and her 2002 vote on Iraq.

The personal slights aimed at her family seemed to irk Ms. Obama most of all.

“See, there’s a whole lot of talk in this race about elitism and people being out of touch,” she told a crowd of approximately 1,500 in the Ovens auditorium.  read more »

To view the North Carolina Democratic primary from outside the state is to view an ascendant Hillary Clinton and a Barack Obama mired in "bitter" and Jeremiah Wright. To view the primary from inside North Carolina is to see almost the exact opposite.

I traveled back and forth from Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, this past weekend. I grew up there.

All the anecdotal evidence suggested that it's Obama country.  read more »

HIGH POINT, N.C.—Sounding a sharply populist note the day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Hillary Clinton tore into China, OPEC, oil companies, "Wall Street bankers" and predatory lenders during a 35-minute speech at the train station in this town of 100,000 around noon today.

In the process, she sought once again to portray Barack Obama as less knowledgeable about the problems of the less fortunate.  read more »

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Bill Clinton, making a late plea for votes on his wife's behalf here yesterday, asserted that "academic study after academic study" had shown the former first lady to be the victim of "the most slanted press coverage in American history" during this campaign.

Though it was not clear exactly what studies he was referring to, Clinton appeared especially irked by criticism of the senator's proposal to offer consumers a summer 'holiday' from gasoline taxes.  read more »

So far, 2008 has been the year of artificial momentum and warped expectations, and Hillary Clinton has been the beneficiary.

In contest after contest this primary season, we have seen the illusion of momentum, created by the spillover effect from recent results and whatever the dominant media narrative of the moment happens to be. So, for instance, when Barack Obama scored a clear win in Iowa and Hillary Clinton finished in third place, the Clinton Collapse instantly became the media’s obsession and Obama overtook Clinton in New Hampshire polls almost overnight.  read more »