Obama is today's story, Clinton is yesterday's

Ever since Tuesday's (May 6) primary results may have changed the U.S. political playing field forever most of the corporate-owned media commentators have focused on Hillary Clinton's loss. Will she or won't she? What will it take to get her out of the race? All this is important but it's not the story. The real story is much more important. It's about the first person of color to very likely become one of the two mainstream parties' presidential candidates. Now that's a hell of a story. How did a virtually unknown (outside Illinois) one-term Senator beat today's (or I guess yesterday's) most powerful political machine. But the trials and tribulations of Hillary Clinton ("The Perils of Hillary") have been getting all the press attention.

But in the middle of all this one of the two best political commentators Mike Lupica (the other is Keith Olbermann, both interestingly enough with backgrounds in sports journalism) has written something that captures an aspect of the 2008 campaign that everyone else has missed. In today's New York Daily News (May 8), he writes:

.... and it all goes on while Obama runs the closest possible thing we have seen in 40 years to the campaign Robert F. Kennedy was never allowed to finish in 1968.

Of course, before this amazing insight, he does talk about Clinton, but even then with greater truth than most of his colleagues:

She stays in the race now for the worst possible reasons, hoping that there is some new bogeyman like Wright around the corner and Obama will somehow break down in the stretch like a fragile racehorse.

It is the Clinton version of the politics of hope....

I don't think that's the person we want answering the mythical 3AM phone calls, or at any other time for that matter. All the stories about Obama not being able to win the match fell by the wayside last Tuesday night.

(Also see the Kos on the Lupica piece)