Obama victorious.(POLITICS)(Barack Obama)

BARACK OBAMA's big win in North Carolina and his slim loss in Indiana on May 6 brought him yet closer to the nomination, and brought us face-to-face with several aspects of the rest of the campaign.

One is the full-court press of the press on Obama's side. After May 6 the press begged/ordered Hillary Clinton to pack it up. Nothing must throw the nominee-presumptive of the Democratic party, which is also the press's party, off his stride. Yes, the media have given some attention to various Obama headaches, such as his pastor and mentor Jeremiah Wright (how could it fail to when Wright made his barbaric yawp before the National Press Club?). But Obama is their man. Like them, he is highly educated and left of center; unlike most of them, he is black, a quality to which all of them defer. Time now for journalists to put their shoulders to their laptops and make history.

In the aftermath of his victory, Obama showed them how this is to be done. Speaking to his supporters in Raleigh, N.C., Obama decried "the politics of division and distraction"--Republican division and Republican distraction. McCain, he warned, will use "the very same playbook that his side has used time after time." What are the plays in that playbook? "Pouncing on every gaffe and association ...