We have a situation here...

TPM closed the night last night with the observation that it's difficult to imagine now how this does not go all the way to the convention. If that's an overstatement, it's a small one - it is certainly easy to see how this could be decided at the convention, with over half the states done and Obama and Clinton all but tied, and with the same preportional allocation system that helped us get here awarding delegates in the remaining contests.

In almost all ways, this is great. I think our party is getting stronger as we watch these two excellent candidates continue to make their cases. (BTW, doesn't it feel like the longer this goes on, the more we're going to end up demanding both of them on the ticket?) But a concern has to be that, if we wait until August to pick a nominee, John McCain gets to campaign all by his lonesome for all that time.

Here again, though, this could work to our advantage. Perhaps divisions within the GOP will soften him up before we even turn our full attention in that direction. And if the primary concern is making sure we win in November - which, for many people who become familiar with Obama and Clinton and decide that they both would make excellent Presidents, it is - then maybe we'll have a better view of November from August than we do from February.

At least McCain's totally robotic speech last night, along with his unnerving discomfort with hugging his wife on national TV, and the Obama campaign's deft state-managing of the juxtaposition of the two of them, went a long way towards easing my McCainophobia.