The Ultimate Punishment

"In a relatively short amount of time, Clinton has gone from being the inevitable winner to being the underdog to being a dead woman walking."

Since Time is the magazine that pronounced Obama the nominee, albeit with an asterisk, let's check out the Joe Klein piece:

"The formerly charismatic Obama had undergone a transformation of his own: from John F. Kennedy to Adlai Stevenson, from dashing rhetorician to good-government egghead. He derided the gas-tax holiday as the gimmick it was, gambling that Democrats would see through the ruse. He trudged through the Wright debacle, never allowing his impeccable disposition to slip toward anger or pettiness. On the Sunday before the primaries, he gave a dour, newsless interview to Tim Russert, enduring another 20 minutes of questions about the Reverend Wright. Meanwhile, Clinton was spiky and histrionic in her simultaneous duel with George Stephanopoulos. She made alpha-dog power moves, standing up to talk to the live audience while Stephanopoulos remained seated, forcing him to stand uncomfortably beside her and then, later, embarrassing her host by reminiscing about his liberal, anti-NAFTA, Clinton-staffer past . . .

"Clinton's apparent loss of the nomination was a consequence of her campaign's incompetence, but it was also a result of her reliance on the same-old. The shameless populism that seemed a possible game changer to media observers, micro-ideas like the gas-tax holiday, the willingness to go negative -- which Obama tried intermittently, in halfhearted reaction to Clinton's attacks -- appeared very old and clichéd to Obama's legion of young supporters, who were the real game changers in this year of extraordinary turnouts."

This is getting major pickup:

"As talk swirled this morning over when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton should end her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination," says the L.A. Times, "her campaign chairman predicted the party would have a presumptive nominee in June and, if it's not Clinton, she would campaign for Sen. Barack Obama.

"The comments by Terry McAuliffe seemed aimed at persuading superdelegates and Democratic Party leaders that Clinton would not hurt party unity by pressing her campaign through the final June 3 primaries in Montana and South Dakota."

Doesn't seem that different to me than the past rhetoric, which is that the superdelegates, obviously, will decide.

"Even as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton persisted with her campaign for the nomination, Mr. Obama made a celebratory return to the Capitol, where he received an enthusiastic reception on the House floor in an appearance staged to position him as the party's inevitable nominee," says the New York Times.

All right, the veep chatter is under way. Here's the first of 5,000 posts on the subject:

"The notion that Barack Obama should pick Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate is crazy," says Fred Barnes. "She passes the first test of a veep selection: she's a plausible president. But she fails the second. She doesn't qualify as a partner on the Democratic ticket (and possibly in the White House) that Obama would be comfortable with--far from it.

"But there is someone who does meet these two requirements, plus a third one and maybe a fourth. That person is Democratic Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania. Yes, Rendell was the leading supporter of Clinton when she trounced Obama in the Pennsylvania presidential primary last month. But he's a smart, tough, and respected politician who would no doubt embrace Obama eagerly, fully, and loyally."