Obama addresses a crowd of West Virginians on veteran care - posted by the Obama campaign

With the two biggest remaining slices of that scrumptious delegate pie now served up at the rabid counter-top of this bizarre Democratic primary, a slight cool breeze can be felt, offering some relief from the oppressively stale air of a stagnant national dialogue.

As the Clinton campaign clawed and scratched for any conceivable advantage in a post-Super Tuesday fight they never expected to be in, the rest of us became mired in the mud they were slinging. A renewed zeal for politics in America stood behind the proverbial bus and took it in the face as the wheels of our democracy struggled to regain traction.

And yet…it’s an interesting chicken and egg scenario for Obama, who initially pledged to take the high road but eventually had to roll his sleeves up and start slinging some shit of his own. Was it his own form of early season pandering, or was he simply naive enough to think he could escape from primary season still standing on his pedestal?

Many Obama supporters will profess their deepest abhorrence of how sound-byte hysteria has commandeered this election and steered it off task, possibly forever. A nation of gaffes.

Obama can’t empathize with White America. With working class folks. With military people. He’s too radical. Too liberal. Too elitist.

Those were popular criticisms when the Obama campaign was looking up, stunned, from its 2008 nadir last month. And so the man who descended from Heaven on a white, puffy cloud woven of of change and unity all of a sudden found himself a city-slicker knee-deep in a backwoods, Arkansas mudfight, staring innocently at a handful of grime, wondering if he should join in.

At the very least, that’s how he’d want you to see it.

As early as January, he seemingly had already made up his mind, though. But as his pledged delegates mounted and he entered the comfort bubble of frontrunner status, what the Clintons began to collectively sling nearly blotted out the sun, providing an easy forum for Obama to snipe judiciously.

I think Clinton supporters have a legitimate beef that she caught the brunt of the negativity train simply because she was shoveling up from second place. If only she hadn’t demanded that the spotlight be on her with each desperate heave-ho. Obama has done his share in his more vulnerable states.

But as Obama stumbled out of the month of April, blood-stained and bleary-eyed like John McClane out of a burning Nakatomi Plaza, there’s one thing he has shown unquestionably: He draws his resilience from his skills as an orator.

Whenever he found himself bit by a byte, he would broaden the context to a national scale and negate the pettiness by spinning it into a commentary on our flawed national psyche. Some people resent that. It hurts to look in the mirror when you’re woefully out of shape. But for the most part, people have latched on to it in a big way.

It’s nice to have more than a few sound bytes to base your entire voting judgment on. And that guy can really speak earnestly on complex topics. The Obama campaign has wised up to both of those facts, as well as the learned a few lessons about YouTube dissemination.

They recently posted the full version (embedded above) of a speech that Obama made to West Virginians (full text here). But again, chicken or the egg?

Is his pandering just more layered, more complex, more artfully delivered? Clinton sounds robotic, McCain sounds old. Obama sounds vital. He’s gaining votes on visceral appeal alone. Hard to tell if the ability to rouse translates into an ability to lead, though.

And more importantly, can he continue to deliver oratory knock-out punches against McCain in the general election, when all bets are off and broad talking points replace regional issues he’s had success with so far? There are only so many times you can get up in the face of criticism and hold the mirror up without turning goodwill into cynicism.

As the recent cover of TIME suggests, the math finally (FINALLY) allows all media outlets to begin sounding the death knell of Hillary.
With the Clintons finally out of the picture, we’ll find out shortly if both McCain and Obama decide to make good on claims of highbrow campaigning, clearing the repugnant stench from the room. Can you really have a horse race without the smell of road apples?