Networks Dismiss Hillary Landslide

Slate's John Dickerson:

"Barack Obama lost West Virginia by 30 points, which looks like an enormous fall. Clinton was favored to win the state, but Obama is the all-but-named nominee. Shouldn't that have prevented such a rout?

"Whether Obama suffered any damage will be determined by the behavior of the superdelegates in the next few days. Will any of them embrace Clinton after her victory? Right now, Obama's cushion seems intact . . .

"So, the Democratic race may supply us with the kind of headline you'd expect to see in the Onion: 'Clinton Wins in Landslide, Drops Out of Race.' "

The Huffington Post, which treats each Barack victory as a celestial happening, is more interested in President Bush saying he gave up golf in 2003 out of respect for our soldiers, with Hillary's win relegated to a small headline that says it "Doesn't Really Matter."

In the cat-out-of-the-bag department, James Carville is quoted by South Carolina's State newspaper as saying: "I still hear some dogs barking. I'm for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee."

Is Obama trying to ensure a fair playing field or rule his critics out of bounds? National Review's Rich Lowry thinks it's the latter:

"After his blowout win in North Carolina last week, Obama turned to framing the rules of the general election ahead, warning in his victory speech of 'efforts to distract us.' The chief distracter happens to be the man standing between Obama and the White House, John McCain, who will 'use the very same playbook that his side has used time after time in election after election.'

"Ah, yes, the famous distractions with which Republicans fool unwitting Americans. Ronald Reagan distracted them with the Iranian hostage crisis, high inflation and unemployment, gas lines, and the loss of American prestige abroad. Then, the first George Bush distracted them with the notion of a third Reagan term, as well as the issues of taxes, crime, and volunteerism. After a brief interlude of national focus during two Clinton terms, another Bush arrived wielding the dark art of distraction.

"Forget 'bitter'; Obama must believe that most Americans suffer from an attention-deficit disorder so crippling that they can't concentrate on their own interests or values. Obama has an acute self-interest in so diagnosing the American electorate. His campaign knows he's vulnerable to the charge of being an elitist liberal. Unable to argue the facts, it wants to argue the law -- defining his weaknesses as off-limits."

ABC's Jake Tapper has been keeping track of the number of times the Illinois senator has blamed his staff for some politically embarrassing position, under the headline: "Obama's Inability to Hire Good Help Rears Its Head . . . Again":

"In an interesting New York Times look at Obama's rise in Chicago politics, we learned that in 2004 some Jewish supporters became alarmed to learn that in a questionnaire Obama refrained from denouncing Yasir Arafat, or from expressing strong support for Israel's security fence.