Let me just add a little more on the discussion last night of Obama and his campaign.

Since I've been focusing so much on what I see as his campaign's shortcomings, it might come off to some like I'm saying his advisors are idiots, that he's running the worst campaign ever and that his chances at the nomination are hopeless. And I want to assure you I'm not saying any of those things. Anything can happen. And as the 2004 primaries show, it often does. I think Hillary is much, much less likely to suffer a Dean-like implosion than Dean did. But the truth is that Obama really isn't that far behind and Hillary's lead isn't nearly as prohibitive as the conventional wisdom suggests.

My disappointment with Obama's campaign to date is that it's really, ironically, been pretty old politics to me. And I mean that in this sense. Going back several cycles, you've often had some version of the Gore v. Bradley campaign in 2000. One candidate who's the establishment party figure and another who talks about new stuff and change and principle and generally whets the appetites of the party's cerebral types but then never quite delivers with anything specific and gets crushed by the well-oiled campaign of the establishment candidate. I've seen different versions of this in Mondale/Hart, Clinton/Tsongas, Gore/Bradley. And the same result every time.

The reason it seemed like it might be different this time is that Obama was raising the kind of money that would allow him to match Hillary dollar for dollar in ads, foot soldiers and infrastructure. But so far I haven't seen a case made for Obama over Hillary behind the fact that it'd be cooler to have him as president than her -- a point I concede, but one I doubt is sufficient to get him the nomination.

And the truth is that however we got to this point, he needs to take the initiative and change the dynamic of the race. Or else the conclusion we're headed toward looks pretty clear.