The Note: After Midnight

March 21, 2008 -- Sometimes, like a Cinderella team marching through March, Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign seems nothing short of charmed.

It helps that while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has 10 weeks to make Obama totally and entirely unelectable, Obama just has to wait out the clock.

But the outside help Obama is getting (some that he asked for, some that he didn't) is the X-factor -- and it means that, even as Obama grapples with perhaps the biggest challenge to his candidacy, he will be the nominee short of something else dramatic happening in the race that's already seen everything.

To survey the data points on a good Friday in Obamaland, in what had the potential to be a very rough week:

- Obama controls Friday's marquee event -- a 12:30 pm ET endorsement in Oregon by Governor/superdelegate/former Clinton Cabinet secretary/former candidate Bill Richardson, D-N.M., who provides a handy answer to the he's-not-ready argument (and who resisted the full Clinton press).

Richardson's key line, from the endorsement announcement (news of which broke, for what it's worth, a few minutes after 3 am, prompting different kinds of phone calls): "There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation's security is on the line."

This from the e-mail message sent to Richardson supporters in the wee hours: "The 1990's were a decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward."

"This is a really big deal, and it couldn't come at a better time" for Obama, ABC's George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America." "Obama will owe him big."

(And, for better or worse, former senator John Edwards is staying out of the fight.)

- Michigan, by not voting again, breaks Obama's way -- remember that the status quo is very good for him these days. That plus Florida means two very big states that weren't in his column will not, in all likelihood, count for anything in the delegate race.

- The timing of the Clinton library document dump means that reporters are probing Clinton's record (including every crumpet consumed on a foreign trip) at the very time the Clinton campaign wants the focus on Obama's record.

- Surely Obama didn't ask for his private information to be improperly accessed by State Department workers. But how does a story about Bush administration ineptitude (with hints of dirty tricks) not work to his benefit?

- And while his speech this week on that whole little race thing may not have put anything in his rearview mirror, Clinton is struggling for a way to do anything about it (and a picture like this, while pointless, makes it just that much tougher).

The controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright should be, for Clinton, the story that says everything -- it puts Obama in an uncomfortable race box, and the sermon clips speak for themselves.

Yet: "As a matter of strategy, top Clinton allies and advisers said Thursday they were treading carefully when it came to talking about Mr. Wright with superdelegates," Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times. "The difficulty, Clinton advisers and political analysts said, was that a race-based argument against Mr. Obama's electability was unappealing and divisive and cut against the image of the Democratic Party and its principles."

Think it's leaving Clinton a bit uncomfortable? "When Clinton was then asked specifically if her campaign was pushing the Wright story -- she shrugged and took the next question, ignoring the reporter," ABC's Eloise Harper reports. Later, Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway told ABC: "She was and is unaware of anyone on the campaign pushing [the Wright] issue with superdelegates."

As for the long-term implications, "some voters say the revelations about Obama's 20-year relationship with Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ was a deal-breaker for them -- that there is now no way they will vote for Obama," Scott Helman and Sasha Issenberg, reporting from Indiana, write in The Boston Globe. "Others say that it would be wrong to hold Obama accountable for his pastor, or that the black anger Wright has expressed is understandable."

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dick Polman writes that Obama's not in the clear: "His full speech text was an appeal to the intellect, but the short-hand version of this affair packs a visceral punch. Some voters will simply reduce it all to a few sentences: Why didn't Obama, upon hearing something vile or hateful, simply get up and walk out? How could Obama stick by a reverend who stands in the pulpit and says 'God damn America?' "

Obama didn't do himself any favors Thursday, speaking about his white grandmother in a Quote We'll Read Again: "She is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, well there's a reaction that's in our experiences that won't go away and can sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it."

"Obama aides rushed yesterday to clarify the 'typical white person' remark," Michael Saul reports in the New York Daily News. Said Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman: "His intentions may have been misconstrued."

An aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., meanwhile, learns the wrongs and Wrights the hard way: "The campaign of Sen. John McCain suspended an aide Thursday for distributing a YouTube video linking Sen. Barack Obama with his longtime pastor, whose history of intemperate remarks has roiled the presidential campaign in recent days," McClatchy's Matt Stearns reports. "The aide, Soren Dayton, used a personal account on Twitter.com to send a link to the two-and-a-half-minute video."

(Really -- Twitter?)

Poring over Clinton library documents, The Washington Post's Peter Baker and Karen DeYoung write the kind of story the Clinton campaign wants done on Obama. "Clinton's camp has depicted her as a virtual secretary of state, circling the globe to bring peace to troubled lands and open borders for refugees," they write. "Sen. Barack Obama's camp has presented her as a glorified USO officer, entertaining troops and having tea with crown princesses. More than 11,000 pages of her schedules released this week, along with interviews with former diplomats and administration officials, present a more mixed picture."