Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Governor Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama today. Make no mistake, this is huge. Richardson was a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet and the Clinton’s worked hard to get his endorsement.

Bill Richardson is of course a super delegate. After Richardson, expect the remaining uncommitted super delegates to move toward Obama and end this race. Since February 5th Obama has picked up over 60 super delegates while Hillary Clinton has picked up only a handful. That trend will now accelerate.

The Politico today also signalled the beginning of the end with a story entitled "The Clinton myth":

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

I would anticipate the media narrative of a "close race" to succumb to the actual reality of the race in the coming days and weeks. The move of the super delegates – and I expect some more prominent names to endorse Obama in the next few weeks – will give the media narrative a much needed reality check as well.

My friend, and staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, Taylor Marsh also sees the writing on the wall.

[Via Robbie]

The above video is a fuller version of the sermon where Jeremiah Wright says "God damn America". Wright says this after a long discourse on how governments can change. As an example, he praises the presidency of Bill Clinton and then decries that of George W Bush.

[Via Robbie]

The above video is a fuller version of the sermon where Wright quotes someone else as saying "America’s chickens have come home to roost". The sermon focuses on what the response to the attacks of September 11th should be.

The above videos show the controversial sermons in fuller context.

Speaking of context, the above picture apparently shows First Lady Hillary Clinton sitting with Reverend Jeremiah Wright on September 11, 1998 at the White House. They are watching President Bill Clinton confess his sins to a group of clerics gathered two days after the Ken Starr report was released. The picture is from the Associated Press. If someone digs up the original uncropped picture, let me know 🙂

[Click the image above for a larger version]

[Hat Tip Daily Kos]

Two days after Ken Starr sent his report to Congress on September 9, 1998 President Bill Clinton told a room full of clerics at the White House: "I have sinned". Amongst those invited to hear Bill Clinton confess his sins was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The New York Times reports:

With tears in his eyes, President Clinton told a roomful of clerics this morning that he had sinned, speaking just hours before the world was presented a painstaking account by prosecutors of when, where and how.

Addressing an annual prayer breakfast at the White House, Mr. Clinton drew on the New Testament, the Yom Kippur liturgy and Ernest Hemingway as he made his most abject confession yet of personal failure, while declaring that he would defend and redeem his Presidency.

”I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,” he admitted softly, saying that after resisting expressions of contrition he had reached ”the rock-bottom truth of where I am.”

For the first time, Mr. Clinton also asked for forgiveness from Monica S. Lewinsky, on the day that the details of their intimate relationship — details that he had denied and struggled to suppress — poured out through the Internet, whose wonders as a tool of communication he has so often extolled.

”It is important to me,” the President told the prayer meeting, ”that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine: first, and most important, my family; also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”

 Hillary Clinton was in attendance.