The Note: Fades and Fortunes

May 19, 2008 -- How does one have a conversation if nobody's talking back anymore?

To the pundits, the math, and Sen. Barack Obama, we add Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's toughest foe yet: irrelevancy.

A week that should bring another split decision will also bring another Obama milestone: He's likely to clinch a majority of the pledged delegates, which, like just about everything, matters only really in how the supers view it. (Will it bring a Pelosi premium? And/or will it make hubris Obama's toughest foe?)

Your symbolic bookends for two campaigns headed in two different directions: Obama, D-Ill., capped his Sunday with a record crowd in Portland, Ore. -- 75,000 people crammed into a park and floating in kayaks and canoes not to see a football game or a rock star but a politician. ("Wow. Wow. Wow," said the orator.)

Clinton, D-N.Y., on Sunday spent an hour listening to a sermon based on Matthew 5:27-32 -- on lust and adultery. ("How is your commitment level in your marriage this morning?" said the pastor.)

Clinton -- running on some combination of fumes, inertia, and grit -- may yet stay in the race through May 31, June 3, or even longer. But the general election, it seems, has simply started without her.

"Barack Obama is hoping a strong showing in Oregon's Tuesday primary will finally slam the door on Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidential nomination," Matt Phillips and Amy Chozick write in The Wall Street Journal.

"With the fresh memory of Sen. Obama's loss last week in West Virginia -- where Sen. Clinton took 67% of the vote -- the Obama camp is also working to cut into Sen. Clinton's base of support among white working-class and rural voters in Oregon."

"Obama needs just 21 of the 103 delegates at stake [Tuesday in Oregon and Kentucky] to achieve a majority of pledged delegates," ABC's Tahman Bradley reports. "However, Obama will not be able to reach the magic 2,026 number of delegates needed to secure the nomination because he holds 1,904 delegates overall, according to ABC News' estimate."

"The prospect that Obama might clinch the nomination this week could change if the Obama campaign has a large number of superdelegates tucked in their back pocket, or if enough uncommitted superdelegates are ready to move on, feeling like the people have spoken and their choice is clear."

Either way, Tuesday will mark an important date in Obama's trajectory: "We will have a majority of the pledged delegates," Obama told ABC's Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America" Monday. "Obviously we won't have completed the nomination process because we'll still be a little bit short. . . . But I think it's an important milestone for our campaign."

And he laid down this marker for his foes: "I do wanna say this to the GOP: If they think that they're gonna try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful," Obama said, tagging efforts to take his wife's words out of context as "low class." "Because that I find unacceptable. The notion that you start attacking my wife or my family -- you know, Michelle is the most honest, the best person I know."

"These folks should lay off my wife. Alright? Just in case they're watching," he added (only slightly smiling).

(How does this square with the DNC's regular blasts at Cindy McCain, over her refusal to release her tax returns?)

Obama plans to spend his election night Tuesday in symbolically/electorally significant Iowa -- to (sort of) close it out where it all began, get it?

"We thought it was a terrific way to kind of bring things full circle," said Obama, per ABC's Sunlen Miller.

The visit is "a nod to the state where he notched his first 2008 victory on a night when he is expected to tighten his grip on the nomination," Thomas Beaumont writes in the Des Moines Register, adding that his rally in downtown Des Moines will be near his old campaign headquarters.

"Much more than nostalgia seems to have motivated that decision," Larry Rohter reports in The New York Times. "If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president."

Actually, that's not how Democrats choose their nominees. "Declaring mission accomplished doesn't make it so," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson tells the New York Post's Charles Hurt. (Hint: Florida and Michigan still matter, too.)

"I do think Sen. Obama has to be careful as to how much he makes Tuesday's likely achievement a victory lap," ABC's Jake Tapper writes. "He hasn't won yet, Clinton is still in the race, and even if her victory is improbable, it is not impossible."

And contradictions are the least of Obama's worries -- how about convalescence?

How it ends matters: "Mrs. Clinton's all-but-certain defeat brings with it a reckoning about what her run represents for women: a historic if incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high office in the first place," Jodi Kantor writes in The New York Times. "The answers have immediate political implications."

Geraldine Ferraro says she may not vote for Obama: "I think Obama was terribly sexist," she tells Kantor.

This means up-for-grabs voters. "Obama aides say the campaign will reach out to wary women by stressing how he owes much of his success to strong women. . . . He'll reinforce that even though he may not be Hillary, he's voted like her," Newsweek's Suzanne Smalley writes. "The McCain camp believes Hillary backers -- working-class white women and independents, in particular -- could migrate to McCain rather than to Obama."

The legacy of this history-making race isn't history itself: "A Democratic race that a couple of months ago was celebrated as a march toward history -- the chance to nominate the nation's first woman or African American as a major-party candidate -- threatens to leave lingering bitterness, especially among Clinton supporters, whose candidate is running out of ways to win," Krissah Williams writes in The Washington Post. "At least for now, many on both sides said they have been too put off and have become too embittered to pull together for the party if their candidate isn't on the ballot."

The money people get that. "Top fundraisers for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have begun private talks aimed at merging the two candidates' teams, not waiting for the Democratic nominating process to end before they start preparations for a hard-fought fall campaign," Matthew Mosk and Chris Cillizza write in Sunday's Washington Post.

"In small gatherings around Washington and in planning sessions for party unity events in New York and Boston in coming weeks, fundraisers and surrogates from both camps are discussing how they can put aside the vitriol of the past 18 months and move forward to ensure that the eventual nominee has the resources to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November," they write.

Worth reading all the way to the end for this big hint: "There's gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one "Obama ally."

"Talk of a joint war chest comes as the two candidates prepare for an expected split decision in the primaries being held Tuesday," ABC's John Hendren reports.