Chuck Todd call this the greatest political upset in history. Incredible campaign against huge odds, creating the best political organization in history, with a million and a half small donors, defeating a relatively popular "incumbent" candidate with a strong base. Tonight his speech contrasted with Clinton's and McCain's showed why he is successful in the primary and will be successful in the GE. A mature and gifted man who is a great political leader.

Keep those votes rolling in, superdelegates. Does anyone know the reason Wyden is waiting until June 13?

"Greatest political upset in history" ???

No, not really. I would say Truman's come from behind presidential election in 1948 or McCarthy beating Johnson in New Hampsure in 1968 are both much bigger.

Obama is talented; talented enough, as you say, to create a good political organization that beat the "incumbent". But, since he has only barely beat the incumbent while losing bigtime in South Dakota after everyone said he was the winner means that his is only good, not great. He does not have an overwhelming position regardless of what his supporters say.

Now, to be great, Obama needs to do SOMETHING NOW to unite the party and make Clinton's supporters into Obama supporters. I have noticed that after all of Obama's grand language is spoken, he exhibits a real hesitencey to actually take action. He is much, much better than McCain; but, Bobby Kennedy, he is not.

Great speech by Obama!!

Anyone heard when Sen. Wyden is going to announce his support for Obama?

Inspiring great speech by Obama. His magnanimity towards Hillary was quite a contrast to her shabby selfish "me me" speech. Graciousness is a foreign term to her. The Clintons do suffer from "deranged narcicissism", as one commentator called it. Shame on Hillary. She just doomed any chances of her being a VP with that vitriolic speech.

Munir in Eugene

Why shouldn't Hillary run as a 3rd party candidate? Seems as good a time as ever to be able to make a viable run and therefore setting up some street cred with the people

Addendum:

I decided that Hillary shouldn't release her delegates before the convention.

She should instead, shut down her campaign and start aggressively whacking McCaine while remaining silent about (thus tacitly accepting) Obama. Thus, the issue of Obama and Hillary would remain slightly in doubt, essentially FORCING the networks to provide gavel to gavel coverage of the convention. This, of course would be excellent free publicity.

To date, Hillary's staying in the race has caused lots of interest in Democratic politics and attracted lots of new Democratic voters. Why stop now?

Dream on Republican shill... give HRC some credit for not being brain-dead, which she'd have to be to so torpedo the party she has worked so hard to advance.

My comment was directed to the mightily undazzling MT-D.

OMG! McCain's speech. Awful, just awful. I found myself feeling sorry for him. It was as if he really didn't want to be there. Awful ... just awful.

at least mccain came off as honest

Linley, while of course I have some idea about RFK, I don't have a memory of him and since you seem to feel strongly on the subject I'd appreciate it if you could educate me. It seems that you can just look at video of Obama and say right off, "RFK he is not." Help me understand here. What are you talking about? Why does Obama have to be RFK and not himself? What did RFK do better? Links? This is a serious question and I promise not to mock whatever reply you make.

at least mccain came off as honest

Well, at least you found something to salvage from that train wreck of a speech. McCain's been around forever and I never realized exactly how bad he is at public speaking.

He's terrible. Worse than George W. Bush.

Selensmom,

Obama has been recently compared to RFK. My point about RFK is that he had a history of acting as well as talking. He was the Attorney General in the JFK administration and was central to many of that administration's actions W.R.T. integration.

During Obama's short stint in the senate, as well as on the campaign trail, he has talked a lot but seems to be very hesitant to act. For instance, he could capture every Democrats' support today if he publicly offered Hillary the VP slot. But, if things go as they have gone up to now, he will give noble speeches and actually act very slowly and very conventionally letting this situation drag on. He is supposed to be THE CANDIDATE now; a world leader and future president. It's time for him to ACT to bring the party together. If he cannot withstand or live up to the notoriety of having Hillary on the ticket, perhaps we have the wrong candidate.

Don't get me wrong, I will vote for him. But, he is definitely what I call a least worse candidate.

Linley, the problem you describe is actually looking to the wrong candidate for VP. He is the right president.

Linley;

What is Obama supposed to do. Supplicate himself to HER UNDIGNIFIED and kiss her ass. Ms. Clinton is the one who needs to do something, like endorse him and quietly go away

My congratulations to Obama and to all his supporters here in Oregon and elsewhere. Obama ran a good campaign and, of course, I will vote for him in the Fall.

His victory in the fall is anything but assured, even with Hillary's full support. His lack of experience in just about anything significant is troubling to a lot of people I know. They are concerned, as am I, that when the Republican trash machine gets through with him, it will make his experience with the Clintons look like a 3rd grade cupcake exchange. I just hope he doesn't have more dirt the Clintons haven't found, because if he does the right wing trashmeisters will have a field day. The Republicans are pros and slash and burn campaigning. McCain is a terrible public speaker, as was Jimmy Carter, but he's got experience people value. Bush 3? I'm not entirely sure, although he is far closer to Bush than I feel comfortable with.

I'd like to see Obama find a place for Edwards, my original candidate, in his cabinet. As for Hillary, like her or not, she's got a legitimate claim to Senate Majority Leader after finishing a very close second to Obama. I have grave misgivings about her as VP, but I think that Obama may have to at least make her the offer to mollify some of the Hillary supporters. While Hillary herself will support Obama - I can't see her doing otherwise - there are way too many hard feelings between Obama supporters and Clinton supporters to magically make the enmity go away. And if it remains, Obama has little chance in the Fall.

"For instance, he could capture every Democrats' support today if he publicly offered Hillary the VP slot"

HRC's attitude would suggest otherwise. She is too uptight, too proud, and too stubborn to be a VP. It would seem to her to be toomuch of a 'consolation prize' for something she erroneously felt she was 'entiltled' to have. She has acted like a spoiled 6-year-old who didn't get thier way and is throwing a fit over it by being stubborn and foolish..and we are all suffering because of this attitude.

It would be best if HRC just took her toys with her and left.

Perhaps Sen. Clinton was just hoping for a few more donations to help pay off the $20 million

Congratulations to all the hard working people who contributed to Barak Obama's success in winning the Democratic nomination.

June 3, 2008 is a historic time for Democrats and all Americans when we see the first African American nominated by a major party as their candidate to win the White House.

40 years after the Civil Rights Act. 150 years after slavery. It is a monumental achievement against tremendous odds that the Obama campaign succeeded when so many discounted and disparaged their chances at a win. We should all be very proud of our party and our candidate.

C-O-N-G-R-A-T-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S.

On to the White House!!

It does more than inflame supporters; it points out that Clinton is behaving quite litterally like a sociopath. And we're only talking about a tiny core of supporters; even people like Ed Rendell think she blew it bigtime last night. The remainder need to hear that they are furiously backing a very unbalanced and selfish person for offices that are no longer available. Pretending what she's doing is OK is much worse.

Hats off to Barack Obama!! He has done something that not too many politicians have done in our lifetime: he defeated a Clinton. I can't imagine that that statement would be seen as condescending by anybody. Hillary and Bill Clinton are tough campaigners (and perhaps many other things!!), and Obama played their game at a time when most thought the nomination was Hillary's to lose.

Although Hillary could have been more conciliatory in her speech, I'm inclined to give her a few days to, as she says, "get it right". It will become evident enough what her goals are after not much more than another week.

Which icebergs do we concentrate on next? If he is to be believed, Scott McClellan said we should be very worried about the Bush administration declaring war on Iran or some related action on, say, Halloween night (he didn't say Halloween). It almost makes me think someone like Robert Wexler, the FL congressman who has openly tried to gather impeachment signatures, or Henry Waxman, should be given the VP slot by default. I'm not at all confident that Pelosi, Reid or any of the other applicable congressional committee chairmen, could stop Bush from trying this. Just my .02.

While I also believe it was gaffe for Senator Clinton to fail to acknowledge Senator Obama's attaining the winning delegate total, we should give her a break because of the corporate media's gleeful calls for her withdrawal every time she had a setback in her campaign, starting with the Iowa caucus. It was disrespectful to make those repeated calls when the nomination was still in doubt, and it became a struggle to maintain respect she was due. That was not fair, but I think she got too invested in the struggle with the media.

Pardon my late response; BlueOregon's structure makes it hard to continue a discussion once the article slips off the front page. I was discouraged from trying to respond sooner to TJ because of his propensity for throwing firebombs (as Chris noted) rather than debate.

In support for my observation of the disrespectful coverage of Senator Clinton's campaign I refer to today's HuffPo article Tom Brokaw Slams Press Drumbeat for Hilary's Exit:

"More time was spent talking about when Clinton might call it quits than about how the candidates might deal with the war in Iraq, the high price of gasoline, home foreclosures or the sputtering economy. Or about anything that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain said or did during April and May, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's analysis of political coverage in newspapers, on Internet sites and on television news.

<h2>This doesn't even count the frenzied days after the Iowa caucuses in January, when there was so much media discussion about whether Clinton's campaign would end if she didn't win in New Hampshire that many experts believe a backlash against it was a factor in her victory."</h2>