Recently in Democratic Campaign Category

The time has finally arrived for Hillary Clinton to decide what matters most -- her or the Democratic Party. Clinton can do as she has promised and press on, forcing Barack Obama to beat her and making many superdelegates choose between personal loyalty to her and her husband and party unity. Or she can seize her last opportunity to be graceful by pulling the plug on her presidential aspirations herself.

A close look at the exit polls suggests Rush Limbaugh may have swung Indiana to Hillary Clinton, providing the margin of victory with Republican mischief-makers.

With just a relative handful of votes remaining to be counted, Clinton appears to have won Indiana 51% to 49%, with a margin of about 22,500 votes. Exit polls show that 11 percent of voters in the Democratic primary were actually Republicans, and some 73,000 of them went for Clinton, even though they acknowledged to pollsters that they're likely to vote for GOP candidate John McCain in the fall.

If there's one word to describe the driver of this presidential race, it may not be race, gender, age, money, Iraq or economy. The most powerful word arguably is "proportional," referring to the Democratic Party rule on dividing delegates based on primary results, not awarding them on a winner-take-all basis. Candidates have lived and perished by it ...

Barack Obama may be losing ground in the polls as a he battles to put the Rev. Wright controversy behind him, but he's gaining where it counts -- in the race for superdelegates. Today he bagged another big name -- Paul Kirk, the second former chairman of the Democratic National Committee to come out for Obama in two days. That suggests a convention fight -- Democrats' worst fears and Republicans' greatest hopes  -- isn't in the cards. 

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd today wrote the most insightful and incisive piece I have read to date about Barack Obama's struggles to keep the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from casting a shadow so large and dark that it obscures all other aspects of his campaign.

Dowd is a loud, rambunctious, caustic and often hilarious liberal who can sometimes clatter too long and loud on the same notes. But she is also a serious and lifelong student of politics and politicians and has made a specialty of understanding how human frailties and strengths can influence both governance and whom we choose to govern us. And her clear-eyed look at Obama draws a near perfect portrait of how the Democratic front-runner's struggle in his war within could well determine -- and may have already determined -- the battle he is waging with Hillary Clinton and perhaps with Republican John McCain.