"Obama shows he can go the distance on long, dirty trail"

Joel Connelly (Seattle P-I):

Sen. Barack Obama has repeatedly failed to come up with a sprint finish to put Hillary Clinton away, but proved Tuesday night that he is a distance runner who can win on a muddy track.

With a big victory in North Carolina, Obama set to rest cable TV pundits' clichés that he was exhausted, reeling from his ex-minister's 15 minutes of fame, and that Clinton's gas tax gimmick and negative television ads would carry the day.

Even as Clinton fought to eke out a narrow win in Indiana, a top strategist in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign was pronouncing the Democratic nomination race in Obama's favor.

"It's over," said Frank Greer, who lives in Seattle. "It's time for her to step aside, get on with uniting the party and defeating John McCain. ... After tonight, I think they (Bill and Hillary) will do a sober assessment of where they stand. I really don't think they want to be seen as destructive forces to the party."

Greer was one of the first prominent "Friends of Bill" to back Obama over Hillary Clinton. The more recent converts have included two former Clinton Cabinet secretaries, Bill Richardson and Robert Reich, and Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign manager, David Wilhelm.

Seattle political consultant Cathy Allen, a Clinton supporter, said the contest will go on, but acknowledged that opportunities for her candidate to win it are few and far between.

"Unfortunately, we don't have much choice in the Hillary camp, but prospects in parts of Oregon look good," Allen said.

Oregon and Kentucky will hold primaries May 20. Another Northwest state, Montana, will help wind up the primary season June 3.

The Pacific Northwest has been Obama country. The Illinois senator drew 17,000 people, with 3,000 more unable to get in, at a precaucus rally at KeyArena. A crowd of more than 14,000 turned out to hear him at Boise State, causing Obama to say he didn't know there were that many Democrats in Idaho.

A SurveyUSA today poll, released late last week, put Obama ahead of Clinton by a 51-39 margin in Oregon.

Oregon was once a key stop en route to the White House.

A group of Grants Pass businessmen calling themselves The Cavemen loved to dress up like the Flintstones and pose with stuffy candidates such as New York Gov. Tom Dewey. In 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy upset Bobby Kennedy, the first defeat for a member of the Kennedy family in 27 elections.

"There is an elitism about Oregon that makes me nervous about Hillary's prospects," Allen said Tuesday night.

She added, however, that the Beaver State has a lower per capita income, "higher appreciation of the environment" and a greater blue-collar work force than Washington -- factors that might favor Clinton.

Choose your metaphor, Barack Obama showed last night that he could run on a muddy track, and campaign through a media firestorm with minimal burns.

He had a "tough two weeks," Greer acknowledged last night. The candidate's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, resurfaced with race-laden, off-the-wall remarks. Obama was tripped up by his own words at a San Francisco fundraiser, saying that residents in hard-pressed manufacturing towns were "bitter" and hence found solace in guns and fundamentalism.

The Clinton campaign made common cause with an old adversary -- the right-wing Fox News Channel -- to fan the flames of the Wright controversy. Clinton went on "The O'Reilly Factor." Ex-Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe became a virtual pitchman for the network.

Hillary's heavies were still sowing doubts Tuesday.

"We don't know enough about Senator Obama yet: We don't need an October surprise, and (the chance of) an October surprise with Hillary is remote," said former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes.

Obama has, however, shown he is a candidate who keeps his cool at all times. He has counterpunched rather than thrown sucker punches.

The counterpunching paid off Tuesday night.

Clinton's gimmick promise of a "moratorium" in the 18 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax did not lay down rubber for her campaign. The Obama campaign coolly ran TV spots listing Hillary supporters who opposed the moratorium: The top two names on the list were Washington's Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Clinton said early Tuesday that North Carolina stood to be a "game changer" in the race. "The entire country -- probably even a lot of the world -- is looking at what North Carolina decides," she told a rally.

When the votes were counted, however, she lost the Tarheel State by a 200,000-vote, 14-point margin.

Obama was able to do a little gracious gloating. "Today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, D.C.," he told cheering backers.

"We've seen that the American people aren't looking for more spin and more gimmicks, but honest answers about the challenges we face," Obama declared.

Hope he's right.

After 20 years of nastiness, it's high time a presidential election featured some appeal to the better angels of our nature. Then, too, John McCain has made straight talk his political definition.

If there was a post-graduate Institute for the Study of Pacific Northwest Progressive Politics, Professor Connelly would be its Dean. He does his own homework and he expects you to do the same. He is also a tough grader, so consider his report card carefully.