My wife and I were discussing my statement that Obama is finished, when she told me she thought I was a bit premature. She made a good case, explaining that Obama supporters she knew were still strongly supporting him, and mentioning that the media had not done a good job of covering all of the Wright scandal.

But I knew all of that when I made my prediction.

The problem here is that we are dealing with a purely political scandal, not a sexual one. When the watershed moment came int he death of Gary Hart's campaign it was a juicy sex scandal, so it was splashed all over the news and even his supporters knew that it was over. Obama's watershed moment has passed, but, since it is a political event, his supporters cannot see it as such.

The death knell of the Obama campaign was the moment when he finally denounced Wright. Why? For three reasons. First, it marks the moment when he admitted that his long time friend and mentor was really a racist loon. Second, coming after a long series of statements either denying knowledge or supporting Wright, it looks both clumsy and opportunistic. Third, because during his recent denunciation of Wright, and in the speeches leading up to it, Obama lost all of his usual poise and seemed particularly clumsy and poorly controlled.

Of course, there really was no good way for Obama to handle the Wright affair. The time to have handled it would have been before he announced his campaign. That he entered the race without distancing himself from Wright was itself the worst mistake he made. But, after he was stuck with Wright, the second best choice would have been to admit the mistake and immediately break with him. Had Obama immediately said that he may once have agreed with Wright, but had begun to realize how dangerous the man's speech was and that, now aware of the harm Wright could do, he was breaking his ties to the man, it would have still hurt him, he would have still seemed a bit opportunistic and it would have called his judgment into question, but it would have made the best of a bad situation.

Instead, he denied, then defended, and, when he could do nothing else, finally denounced Wright. This hurt him in so many ways. It makes the eventual denunciation seem forced and political rather than an honest response to something he finds offensive. It instead gives the message that he really does agree with Wright but is being forced by the media to denounce the man. So, not only is he still open to criticism for having spent twenty years in the company of a racist, conspiracy theory supporting mentor, but he also appears to be finally breaking with the man only because of pressure from the press.

Nor did he do himself any good in the way he finally reached this denunciation. Rather than adopting a single response from the beginning, he floated a series of trial balloons, first that eh never heard the offensive speeches, then the "crazy uncle Jerry" defense, and finally "the speech". And it only got worse from there. I think Obama really thought "the speech" was every bit as great as the sycophantic press said, and was shocked that it had not put the matter to rest. That is the only way I can explain the mumbled, confused replies he started to give following "the speech". Now, I never found him charismatic, but even I could see that after "the speech" he lost his smooth delivery and self-satisfied smirk and seemed both puzzled and a bit disturbed by a press that continued to ask about Wright. Rather than his previous habit of professionally delivering smooth, ghost written responses, he began to mutter confused and contradictory replies, often sounding more irritated than anything else. The days between "the speech" and Wright's media blitz were not Obama's finest moments.

Oddly enough, with Wright's sudden flurry of activity, Obama seemed to regain a bit of his poise. Perhaps he finally recognized the need for another scripted response, or had finally resigned himself to the fact that the story was not going away. Whatever the reason, he returned a bit to his old self, the professional presentation, the well written speech. The only problem was, it was much too late. Yes, he denounced Wright, but it only served to confirm that Obama recognized that Wright was over the top, or at least that he recognized the need to say so. In fact, it came across less as a heartfelt statement than the resigned acceptance of the need to abandon someone with whom he actually agreed. In short, it did nothing to repair the damage he had done up to that point.

So, I am sure some will ask, if that is the case, why aren't the polls reflecting this? And why are the Obama supporters still so ardent in their support?

Well, to answer the second first, the supporters are still ardent because they are, in essence, a cult. And just as the failure of a cult leader does nothing to dissuade the true believers, Obama's exposure will not discourage those with real belief. What we do not see, because it is much less visible are the marginal Obama supporters, the people who were not die hard Obamaniacs but would have voted for Obama in the election. These less ardent Obamaniacs and other Obama supporters do not have the true belivers' ability to just ginore bad news and so their support is definitely diminishing as more and more comes out about Obama. But, as the Obamaniacs are so much more noticeable, and so loud in their support, this gradual erosion of the more numerous, and more significant, quiet marginal supporters is passing unnoticed.

And the polls actually do show this. Admittedly it is not as dramatic as one would expect, but McCain has slowly been gaining support in all the traditional Democrat strongholds, the educated, Catholics, the north east, and so on. As McCain has been keeping a relatively low profile, this is hardly because of any media efforts on his part  And as the poll I am mentioning came before his renewed efforts to appear a "maverick", these numbers actually came after his slight shift to the right, meaning it was no common beliefs which drove the support either. It can only be explained by a loss of faith in the Democrat nominees.

But even the polls do not reflect the real dire situation facing the Obama campaign. He is still facing a largely friendly press  which still treats him with deference and an opponent frightened of appearing racist should she try too hard to criticize him. As no one has really exploited the Wright statements and Obama's responses to their full advantage, we have not seen the true damage they have done.

The moment Obama secures the nomination, we will finally see how deep a hole he has dug for himself. Even if McCain sticks with his foolish commitment to not "exploiting" Wright's statements, just showing tapes of the vacillating Obama responses to Wright will paint him as a liar. A tape showing "I never heard it", "Crazy Uncle Jerry", "I could no more denounce him than..." and the final denunciation  would be more than enough to show that this "different kind of politician" is actually a very familiar kind of politician.

So, even if the numbers do not yet show it, and even if his supporters have not been noisily abandoning him, I still think it is fair to say that Obama is finished. The only question remaining is whether the Democrats will admit this or not. That is whether they will continue their suicidal love affair with Obama and go down to certain defeat, or take the remote chance of victory offered by Clinton.

It could go either way, and I learned long ago not to even try to predict the behavior of Demcorats.