Hillary's Last Hurrah

So it ends not with a bang but a whimper, the slow dribbling away of her "tiebreaker" victory in Indiana as Barack Obama seals the nomination in North Carolina, "a big state, a swing state," as he put it, and more to the point, a state that gave him a resounding margin after the Jeremiah Wright disaster brought his viability into question.

The chatter about Florida and Michigan, the blather about remaining primaries should start to fade as the superdelegate slide toward Obama begins in earnest and the Democratic Party gets itself together for November.

Obama, in effect, gave his acceptance speech last night and began the campaign against John McCain. Clinton talked gamely about fighting on, but there was a valedictory tone in her voice. Both started the painful process of reaching out for unity and, if Obama chooses, sharing the ticket.

The New York Times headline, "Options Dwindling for Clinton," is an understatement. The campaign is running out of money, running out of arguments about electability and out of contortions to make the primary process look closer than it has been.

What Obama has accomplished in little more than a year, aside from the racial breakthrough, is unprecedented in modern American politics--coming from relative obscurity to take the nomination from a dynastic opponent who was almost universally believed to be unbeatable.

In the past month, he has been tested and toughened by the Wright stuff and surmounted it. John McCain is facing a long, hard summer and fall.