Oh, how sweet it is in the aftermath of Obama’s huge win in North Carolina and squeaker loss in Indiana.  The talk now is that Obama will lock up the majority of pledged delegates with his expected win here in my home state of Oregon.  With the majority of pledged delegates, the superdelegates will be politically unable to stage Clinton’s Hail Mary coup attempt.

Barack nailed it the other day when he said that Clinton learned her lessons from the days of bitter Rovian politics: all the wrong ones.  She decided that was the way the game was played and she would be dirtier, more tenacious, more fear mongering, more race-baiting, more Rovian than the next guy.

Then Obama, like a leader, changed the rules of the political game and brought us back to talking about issues and avoiding the politics of slander and guilt-by-association.  Have you once heard the words “Monica Lewinsky” from him or his camp?  When it would be so easy to return a Rev. Wright “why didn’t you leave your church of twenty years?” volley with a backhanded “why didn’t you leave your husband of twenty-three years?”  When there were any number of opportunities to slam her on sniper fire (he defended her, actually, like a true Democrat defends a fellow party leader) or coffee machines (that’s my job) or not pumping gas, he stayed above the fray in that unflappable favorite-college-professor way of his.

I am so looking forward to the televised debates between the handsome young multi-racial Constitutional scholar with the commanding baritone and the elderly pale confused forgetful rage-driven former POW*.  The parallels to Kennedy/Nixon 1960 will be spilling off editorial pages.

And the campaign!  Oh, I expect McCain to go through the full Rovian cycle of fear, smear, and make unclear, but coming from Raging John the fear’s going to smell like grandpa ranting about kids on the lawn, the smear will seem mean-spirited (and Obama will deftly tag any Swift Boat style attack ads right back at McCain with, “John, I can’t understand how after the Bush dirty tricks against you in South Carolina, you’d dust off the same bag to use against me.”  Or maybe I’m hoping for that; Obama’s probably too cool to go for it), and trying to confuse voters about Obama is going to be tough when he’s going to be painted as confused about his own politics (insert MoveOn McCain/McSame Flip-Flop ads here).

As I hold my mail-in ballot in my hand and color in the oval for “Barack Obama”, it’s comforting to know that my oval may just be the one that nominates the first non-Bush/non-Clinton president in my voting age lifetime (oh, and he happens to be black, too!)

One of my favorite movies is “When We Were Kings”, the documentary of the Ali/Foreman Rumble in the Jungle of 1974.  As Ali was training, the kids in Zaire chanted “Ali bomaye!  Ali Bomaye!”  (”Ali, kill him!”).  Now thanks to Huffington Post, I think I’ve got a new favorite African saying:

“Obama biro yawne yo! Obama biro yawne yo!” (”Obama’s coming. Clear the way.”)

*And about that Senator John McCain: I’m tired of hearing, “Of course we honor his service to our country” as if that’s a required honorific like “Your Highness” or “Your Honor” before criticizing his stupid Bush foreign policy.  Why do we have to say that?  Isn’t honoring our servicemen somewhat the default standard in America?  At least for our political leaders, I would suppose.  His service to our nation is an irrelevant metric of his foreign policy credentials.  He was a sailor who was trained to fly a plane, not negotiate complex treaties with foreign heads of state.

And another thing: why is he a war “hero”?  He was shot down, captured, and imprisoned for five years.  He survived.  Is that the “heroism”?  To me, that’s “survival”.  Heroism is when someone consciously puts his own life on the line to save another’s.  He flew his mission in face of the danger of being shot down, I suppose that’s a conscious decision, but by that metric, every airman in a war zone in every branch of the service is a hero, and if everyone’s a hero, then the word has no meaning.  Perhaps they are even more heroic, since they flew well enough to avoid being shot down and could fly more missions for those five years McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton.