Bwog White House Bureau Chief Jim Downie’s Political Weekly returns for a special end-of-times/beginning-of-times look at the Democratic nomination and a wrap-up of last month’s campaign trail happenings.

And then there were two. One year, three months and twenty-four days after declaring his campaign for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama finally crossed the elusive delegate threshold and declared victory. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (normally as blase as his first name is silly) was heard to declare time and again “people are seeing history being made.” His soothing voice and Helfand-esque beard made this blogger want to be a ridiculously small part of that “history,” and so Political Weekly returns for its first of several irregular summer appearances. Whether this post will live up to that history is another story — probably a story of complete failure.

And now, the news:

IT’S OVER! SWEET LORD, IT’S OVER: As of writing, Senator Obama looks set to end the night with around 2150 delegates — about 32 above the 2118 needed to numerically clinch the nomination. Fortunately for his campaign, this allowed him to declare victory on the last primary night, when the networks were all ready to cover his victory. His speech, at a packed arena in St. Paul, Minnesota, can be found here, and video of the start of the speech can be found here.



Saving Their Best for Last: Obama may have had Will.I.Am and ObamaGirl, but Hillary’s supporters had this. No comment necessary.

IT’S NOT OVER! WE’LL SAY WHEN IT’S OVER: Despite the, um, mathematical facts, Senator Hillary Clinton did not concede tonight at a speech at Baruch College in Manhattan. Text of her speech can be found here. Many observers considered her speech, somewhat surprisingly, yet another argument for her nomination. Pundits questioned why she would continue speaking in this manner. This blogger, though, felt they were missing the biggest question: Baruch College? Really? That’s the best she could do?

How…Dare…You: Bill Clinton tees off on a Vanity Fair reporter who criticized his role in Senator Clinton’s campaign and his dealings with sordid billionaires.

HEY, OVER HERE!: John McCain tried to steal the spotlight and get a jump on defining the general election race by giving the first speech of the night in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He both hit Obama hard on foreign policy, and tried to distance himself from President Bush on that same foreign policy. He was introduced by Governor Bobby Jindal, considered by many a vice-presidential possibility. Also, this blogger just wants to observe that McCain’s biggest enemy in this election may be HDTV: his skin in HD can best be described as “like a walnut.”

Turning It Around: John McCain wants to emulate Ronald Reagan’s  method of dealing with the age issue: bringin’ the funny. He appeared on SNL several weeks ago, and recently debuted his latest joke about age.

Wonky Time: All the usual polling sites are here, here, and here, but here’s another for the mathematically-inclined: FiveThirtyEight, which tries to weigh the polls in a much more accurate formula (it’s run by a guy from Baseball Prospectus). Again, for the mathematically-inclined: those who don’t enjoy hearing about statistics and poll weighing and so forth might want to avoid having their brains exploded.

Lot of Latte Drinkers Over There: A poll of Obama-McCain race in England, France, Germany, Italy and Russia finds that, shockingly, Europe is more liberal than the United States. Who knew?

Photo via NYT