Countdown to Ecstasy

Turn out the liights, the party's overr, at least as far as the Clinton campaign is concerned. Hillary Clinton won big in West Virginia (although Obama actually got more votes there than McCain did running unopposed in the GOPer primary), and it made no difference. Through the day Wednesday, Obama got endorsements (from 3 former SEC chairs to the womens' choice advocacy group NARAL) and another 4.5 super-delegate votes, to go with the four supers and two pledged delegates he got Tuesday.

Hillary's expected WVA win Tuesday was all but overshadowed by the shocking pick-up of a Republican congressional seat in Mississippi that the national GOPers fought hard for, by a Democrat endorsed by Obama who was attacked with TV ads trying to link him through Obama to Rev. Wright.

But Hillary's tour through the TV news shows was utterly overwhelmed by the theatrical endorsement of Obama by John Edwards, amidst a huge throng in Michigan.

Here's Ambinder's list of why the endorsement and its timing is significant (although Obama doesn't automatically get Edwards' 19 delegates, as he suggests), and TPM's brief summary. Edwards got to speak before a bigger and more enthusiastic crowd than he had during his own campaign, and he manifested his pluses and minuses: he can be incredibly eloquent, but he runs it into the ground. Obama let it be his moment, and they did look good together, so I expect he'll be as big a part of the campaign as he wants to be (but not v.p.), and part of an Obama administration.

So if you were plotting this dramatically, Hillary was given her moment, and now the rest of the week is a build-up to May 20. The Obama campaign may or may not exert itself more in Kentucky than they did in WVA--they probably will--aiming for at least a respectable 40 or 45%. But they're ahead by 20 points in Oregon, and that could give him a majority of pledged delegates (he needs just 25 according to the Obama campaign count; 28 according to NBC).

Obama needs about 133 total to achieve the nomination majority, and now it looks that it's going to be a matter of orchestrating when that will happen. I suspect it will happen June 4, the day after the last primary. But it could even happen before then, especially if it's believed that symbolically Obama should get the majority with votes from a contest, not from super-delegates. So the suspense is over, and as far as the Dem campaign goes, the next few weeks should actually be fun.