It an't over, till its over, but this historical contest is over

When did you realize the historic 2008 Democratic Party contest was over? Was it when NBC called the North Carolina primary the moment the polls closed? Or was it when the Indiana count went from 25% to 14% to 8% and then hold at 6% until closing to 4% until well beyond Midnight in the East Coast, Obama closed within 16,000 votes and 2%? I knew it when Hillary appeared on the podium and gave a passive-aggressive, tight upper lip, indirect campaign speech. I knew it then that the air had gone out of the Clinton family campaign to follow the Adam's of Massachusetts, Roosevelt's of New York, Kennedy's of Massachusetts and Bush's of Texas. It was confirmed when MSNBC flashed the report that Clinton's were canceling their TV appearances tomorrow and hunkering down. The full measure of the impact was when I saw Bill Clinton's body language behind his bride and that long, glum face of knowing this was lost.

It is over, the money is not there, for she does not have the resources nor the political capital to fight on. Sure there will be an official announcement that the campaign will suspend operations, advertisements will be pulled, staff's let go and the long measure of accounting will begin. Will Hillary return to the Senate, that is a good question. Will Obama ask her to be his running mate? A very astute and potential cunning question. The answer of that question will be answered by how her and her staff close up the campaign and seek to unite the party and what Hillary's camp has to offer. The reality is that 47% of the historic and record Democratic popular vote is more than a statistical irony, it is a power play. Then the question is what will Bill do, where will he go? Maybe he should join Al and conquer Global Warming?

Not tomorrow watch for the superdelegates to line up rather quickly. My guess is that by the end of the week Obama will have the lead in that category. Clinton will have more defections and before Oregon, Obama might not only have the closed out lead in pledged delegates but also superdelegates. This is over, what a ride.

Now some idealistic musings. The Obama campaign at every turn, practically every person I have met is about the regular citizen in America taking back real power. Franklin Roosevelt coined it a "New Deal". In the end Obama had the political and personal legitimacy of being the only candidate in the Democratic slate that could live and breathe CHANGE. Change represents the entire ESTABLISHMENT that brought about this stupid and absolutely costly Iraq War. It never should have happened. This war did not have any political brakes because the establishment did not have the means to change it and stop it. It didn't have the means to stop it in 2006 or 2007 or this year. The ESTABLISHMENT did not have the means to stop the speculation on Wall Street on America's once bedrock, its home ownership market. It did not have the means to provide health care coverage for its society. It does not have the discipline to make certain America can offer jobs to its educated and motivated middle class. Obama reprsents this change. It will not be easy for the privileged does not want to play fairly, they like the advantage, for there is a real class in America that lives and feeds on getting the advantage while saying they like fairness .

These people I have met know this. The twenty or so volunteers we call the super vols in Colorado Springs, the extended volunteers that appeared in January growing to over 700. The young college kids that sleep on floors or couches that come in and lead 40 or 50 something adults. These are the soldiers of a bloodless revolution, the taking of power from one class to another. It is a funny class for it is not just an economic class, or an educated class, or even an ethnic or urban or rural class, it is 21st century class. It is a class of conscience that we are living in a new age, whether you are 50 and have roughly 30 years to live or 21 and have an adult lifetime ahead.

That is what finally happened today in lowly Indiana. I once lived in Indiana, actually Bloomington and had close friends from farm country, (Newton County) where they grow the seed corn for America, from the Region, from Indy, from Anderson, Ft Wayne and Evansville. I have family in South Bend and even knew Larry Bird, John Mellencamp and Bob Knight, three of the state's iconic cultural greats. Indiana is a strange place, where it can house both the Grand whatever of the KKK and educate Bill and Emily Harris of the SLA. But there in the battleground of the heartland, the place where most truckers drive through, was the end of the 20th century corrupt and lost power conscience. The place where politically pandering didn't actually work.

It is over and the beginning of the final campaign will now begin!