Barack Obama - Presumptive Nominee

Sen. Obama reached the first major milestone yesterday, a majority of pledged/elected delegates. Coupled with the Super Delegate bleed, he now has a 28 SD lead, its over. Really, its all over.

I took a peak at Electoral-Vote to see if there were any polling shifts. Clinton still appears to be the more electable, but upon further analysis, its not hopeless.

The three key states in this cycle will be Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Clinton leads in all three, Obama leads in Pennsylvania, but is behind in Ohio and Florida. However, he is within margin of error, actually only 1 point off McCain.

There is no telling what will happen during the meat of this cycle, but there is clear signals from both campaigns to keep it clean. Obama has had better success in reeling in his supporters. We saw that McCain still struggles with party control.

Also, I noticed another modification since the Smear Boater days:

What 527 groups ultimately do depends on how lawyers advising these groups interpret a series of Federal Election Commission cases over the past two years that heavily fined 527 organizations that participated in the 2004 presidential election.

Among those fined was the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which raised unsubstantiated allegations about John Kerry's Vietnam war record. The FEC has since adopted rules that say groups can air "issue ads" but can't criticize the character of a candidate.

"We can't do in 2008 what we did in 2004," said Chris LaCivita, a Republican operative who worked on the Swift Boat ad campaign. "Everything has to be issue based."

Under those types of guidelines, we may have been spared another 4 years of Bush II. For now, we'll have to hope that the current guidelines are observed.

Flash