The Shape of the Whole. . .

Senator McCain is now officially the nominee, and is to appear at the White House today to receive the President's official endorsement. The Republicans, in what will be a hard year for them anyway, enjoy great good fortune by having as their candidate the only man in their field this year who had any chance at all. Congratulations to Senator McCain.

As for the Democrats, Mrs. Clinton's victories in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island may not mean much -- as the great and good are pointing out this morning, the delegate math is forbidding. Hilla will never admit it, but she probably owes a lot of her resurrection in Texas to none other than Rush Limbaugh. Yes, that's right: the esteemed El Rushbo spent a week urging Texas Republicans who weren't ready to go to McCain yet to cross over and vote for Hillary, just to keep the Democratic fight going. Good move ! As Rush recognized, Republicans and the country benefit by having the Democrats imitate the scorpions in the bottle for as long as possible.

For the first time, St. Barack looks a little rattled -- maybe Hillary's blitz 'em with everything strategy got to him. Memo to the McCainacs: attacking Obama works. Try it -- get in his face a little and tell him "No You Can't." Wonder if Hillary would have done better going that way sooner ?

But the media coverage today is what's really interesting here. I guess the Saturday Night Line skit got the reporters off the dime, and got them asking Obama some questions that they should have been asking a long time ago. You'd expect the storyline today to be all about Hilla the Wonder/Underdog; the tough one; battling on against the odds, yadda, yadda, yadda. But the line of the day is math and delegate numbers. The Candidate of Hope and his surrogates aren't talking about hope and unity and all that happy Barbra Streisand they've been pushing for weeks-- they're talking about superdelegates and proportional representation, winning in the end and hopelessness for Hillary; and the media's following suit. As John Podhoretz recognizes this morning, this treatment of Mrs. Clinton's resurrection by the media -- ignoring her wins, and talking about the numbers -- just shows how much the media political junkies, want, want, want their precious Messiah, St. Barack of Obama.

Finally, there's been a minor kerfluffle in the past hour about Hillary hinting at a shared ticket: Mrs. Clinton's quoted this morning as saying that such an outcome "may be where this is headed." However, Mrs. Clinton correctly notes that "of course we have to decide who is on the top of [the] ticket" and she adds that the "people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me." That's the Hillary we know ! Who could imagine any other outcome ? Here's hoping she and Obama fight this one out for a good while yet.