... As his bus pulled up, he strode onto the handsome old track just as the women's 5K was ending. A murmur went through the crowd, the public-address announcer confirmed his arrival, and the action came to a halt as 5,000 track fans rose as one to cheer the senator from Illinois who appears suddenly on the verge of claiming his party's presidential nomination. The javelin hurlers dropped their equipment, and the 400-meter hurdlers paused in their warm-ups as a waving Obama made his way around one of the country's most famous tracks bathed in late-afternoon sunlight -- a victory lap."You guys are just so fast. I congratulate you," Obama said as he reached the finish line, where the 5K runners still waited -- as if the applause was for anyone but him.
Meanwhile, in West Virginia:
They traveled here from New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana last week to stand in the rain on a rural street corner, at a four-way intersection of winding mountain roads. One woman, a doctor, took vacation time from her job to make the trip. Another, a mother of three, hired a babysitter for the first time in months.The 10 volunteers, linked by a resolve to keep Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign alive by helping her win Tuesday's West Virginia primary, met to wave campaign signs patched together with duct tape. They cheered as the first car, a beat-up white Volvo, rolled toward the intersection, and a young man in aviator sunglasses leaned out his driver's-side window.
"Hey," he said. "Don't you think you're wasting your time?"
In West Virginia (and next week in Kentucky), the old Democratic Party gets one last chance to have their say. They will say 'no' to change in a resounding voice. They will not ratify this sea-change in the American power structure.
And that's okay. We've been here before.
Every progressive movement in this country has been accompanied by bitter-enders who clung to the old way, the way things used to be. Right now the Clinton supporters' lack of consent for change is preventing the Obama movement from getting in gear and speeding off down the track. But Oregon will be the moment when everything finally snaps into place, and the race for the White House will begin in earnest.
Obama will, despite what occurs in WV and KY, win the necessary number of delegates to secure the Democratic nomination on May 21, in Oregon. Yes, because they violated the rules early on, the delegations from Florida and Michigan aren't included in the tally. Too bad for them.
Here in Texas, there will be a state Democratic convention in Austin held the first weekend in June, and a whole passel of Clinton delegates will trudge through the formalities of electing a few people to go to Denver to watch the coronation of Barack Hussein Obama near the end of August.
(There's much more important Texas Democratic Party elections for both they and the Obama delegates, but that's grist for a future posting.)
And come November, Democrats are going to be competitive almost everywhere in the United States (although perhaps not in West Virginia and Kentucky). In North Carolina, the Democratic senate candidate is actually leading Senator Elizabeth Dole. Here in good ol' Deep-In-The-Hearta, Rick Noriega is trailing John Cornyn by just 4 points. In Oregon the Democratic candidates are in a dead heat with long-time incumbent Republican Gordon Smith. We are winning special elections in deep red districts in Illinois, Louisiana, and (hopefully) Mississippi. Even seemingly safe seats in places like Staten Island are succumbing to scandal. There are almost no safe seats, and no safe states, for the GOP in 2008.
We are on the way to a realignment not seen since 1964.
