It takes a different form in 2008 because one of the presidential candidates is black, but honestly, is the current level of racial discourse worse than when Bush pere ran that Willie Horton ad? Or when Clarence Thomas was being nominated? Or basically at any time under Reagan?

In another generation, Obama's ducklike ability to let it all roll off him (at least in public) will be regarded in hindsight as one of those catalysts that finally forced public consciousness of race to evolve, in a similar way to how Kennedy's defense of his religion in 1960 ended anti-Catholic bigotry as it was then known in America.

Those who insist that defeat is inevitable and All is Lost are relieved of the burdensome task of trying. But defeat occurs because the right strategy isn't found, not because it is inevitable.

I'm reminded of something Mark Twain said once: that not believing in anything you hear is just as foolish as believing everything you hear.

Keep it up!

Joan Walsh summarizes the candidates' struggle for California nicely, but an even more concise summary might be simply that now, at the point when it really matters, Obama's campaign is not yet as polished as Clinon's but is close enough. He has a way to go before he's ready for prime time, but he's done enough to compete.

So Editor, it's worth asking: what has really, truly been surprising? There were always open questions in this campaign — could Clinton's opponents get up to speed in time? Would she keep her own campaign's dirty tactics under control or would they backfire? But these are questions that simply couldn't be answered in advance. To describe (most of) what's happened in the Democratic primary as a surprise is something of a misuse of the word — like being surprised when a forecast 50% chance of rain turns into a sunny day.

It's also worth asking — without the challenge that Obama represents, would Clinton have bothered with, say, Latinos? The great virtue of competitive elections is that they allow the electorate — us — to exert more pressure on our would-be leaders than if they were cruising along to a predictable win.

Each of the candidates (including Edwards, though he never found a way to raise his campaign to the necessary level) has made the others more accountable and in so doing been essential to the most inspired, impassioned political campaign in over a generation. Democrats would do well to remember the power of that frisson in November, and beyond.

The bottom line is that Clinton and Obama both have clear areas where their respective campaigns are still vulnerable, and have their work cut out for them.

So far both candidates have shown that they can adapt quickly and fairly creatively to shifting circumstances, and more importantly that they appear to keep their own counsel rather than listen to the press (or their own more irascible supporters).

So the real question is, will Obama lose control of his campaign in the runup to the convention? (Or, for that matter, will Clinton lose control of hers?) So far there's no sign of slippage from either candidate — if anything they both appear to be tightening ship, with Clinton retrenching financially and Obama likely to retool to improve his appeal to Latino Americans.

If they keep it up, who knows? All those Edwards and Kucinich supporters might get to decide the race after all.

[Counting convention delegates] involves a lot of math, a great deal of granular election-results data, and the spreadsheeting skills of a ninja.

Call me pedantic, call me old-fashioned, but this strikes me as stylistically incongruous. Since when are ninjas the exemplars of spreadsheet use? In fact one might expect that martial-arts assassin training doesn't cover spreadsheet programming at all, and that ninjas are consequently very poor at it.

The passage in question is evocative less of an expert than of a poorly chosen worker who doesn't understand what he's doing because it doesn't fit his training, and who might resort to violence in his frustration. So, Editor, unless Farhad Manjoo was trying to suggest that doing primary election math is likely to cause one to flip out and start killing people, this has to be considered a poorly mixed metaphor.