To think through the political implications of the speech for a second, the real loser here looks to be Clinton. Now that Obama's candidacy is, in part, a referendum on the party's willingness to confront the issue of race and forge a cross-ethnic alliance in search of economic justice, it's hard to see how the supers can side with Clinton. Not because Obama is right in his quest, but because his candidacy is now too deeply intertwined with the history of the Democratic Party and the coalition that has evolved to support it. Given that the superdelegates would need to explicitly and overwhelmingly reject Obama's candidacy in order for Clinton to attract the necessary delegates, and insofar as the work laid out in today's speech will now become a fundamental part of Obama's candidacy, it seems very hard for the superdelegates to break with the voters and nominate Clinton. Before today, it was just Obama, and his movement. After today, it's Obama, and his movement, and also the party's comfort with the realities of race. How this all plays out in the general election is anyone's guess, but the more the primary becomes about race, the worse off Clinton is. A break with African-Americans would be devastating to the party, and an elite decision to choose Clinton over Obama looks ever more likely to create such a split.
