Preparing for an election day that has little at stake, as Byrd goes Obama

The Democratic campaign is strangely subdued given that we are only one day from the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. The question, after all, is no longer what Hillary Clinton would need to accomplish to remain credible or even to change the fundamentals of the race, but only what she needs to get in order to make her argument that she ought to stay in the race two more weeks and that superdelegates should at least give her one last chance.

Besides the continuing picture of candidates going through the motions of a competitive race in what has ceased to be one, tomorrow night could also be surreal in that it will feature two dramatically different states that will feature two dramatically different results -- Clinton is heavily favored in Kentucky, in what should be a replay of her 41% victory in West Virginia, and Obama is favored in Oregon. This is confirmed by today's polls:

• Suffolk University finds Clinton leading 51% to 25% in Kentucky, an impressive showing that is inferior to what other polls have been showing. There are obviously a lot of undecideds. Obama's popularity stands at 43%, and only 41% of Democrats said they would vote for their party's nominee if their first choice did not get the nomination.
• In Oregon, Obama is narrowly ahead 45% to 41%. His popularity stands at 73%. Even here, Democrats have a loyalty problem as only 59% of Dems say they would stick with their party's nominee if their candidate does not get the nod.

Clinton looks to be in a position to pull an upset tomorrow in Oregon despite Obama's popularity in the state and the huge crowd he drew in Portland (about 70,000 but as we saw in New Hampshire unexpectdly gigantic crowds are not enough to carry one to victory); at least she is in a position to exceed expectations and keep a state that was supposed to be one of Obama's strongest in single digits. She is also likely to pair any good result with Oregon with a triumphant result in Kentucky. Yet, there is little at stake in such successes since Obama is getting ready to announce he has won a majority of pledged delegates tomorrow in a triumphant speech in Iowa, no matter the results in Oregon and Kentucky. As Plouffe said, "A clear majority of elected delegates will send an unmistakable message -- the people have spoken." To which Clinton's Howard Wolfson responded that this was "a slap in the face to the millions of voters in the remaining primary states and to Senator Clinton’s 17 million supporters."

In fact, the attention of superdelegates appears to also have already turned to the general election, making it difficult for Clinton to reach her audience even with convincing victories. Today, Obama got a major endorsement: Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, whose support is announced a week after Obama was trounced in that state. Byrd is now the longest-serving Senator, and an ardent opponent of the Iraq War. He was a member of the KKK in his youth and an anti-civil rights Democrat in the 1960s, so this endorsement will be trumpeted by the Obama campaign as the symbol of the party's reunification (though Byrd has changed course over the past 40 years). This endorsement actually gets Obama at two superdelegates for the day, as he also got the support of the Chairman of the Washington State Party, Dwight Pelz.

This is not to say that tomorrow's results are not important. A strong night by Clinton would be given much more weight than West Virginia's results did last week, especially if she does well in Oregon. WV was expected to go heavily for her, and it was a small state. A strong showing in two bigger states in which she is not supposed to do as well could embarass Obama and push him once again on the defensive.

However much Obama is basically assured of getting the nomination and however much his campaign pretends to be indifferent to tomorrow's results, that does not mean that they do not care about posting convincing results.