I absolutely guarantee Barack Obama will be the nominee. Yesterday, I posted a chart showing why he was unbeatable.

The most realistic worst-case scenario from that chart would have Barack Obama merely winning 48% of the pledged delegates from here on out (he'll actually do better). In that scenario, he'd need just 29% of the uncommitted superdelegates to support him -- and he wins the nomination. There's no doubt that will happen. None. (Edit: I added the preceding paragraph and removed the chart, which you can find in my earlier post.)

Barack Obama's lead is insurmountable. He has a mortal lock on the nomination.

At the same time, I'm not saying the nomination battle is over. I know that sounds like I'm contradicting myself. How can I be sure he will be the nominee, yet say the nomination contest continues? Think about it in football terms. We're in the 4th quarter of a blow-out, effectively. You can't just end the game because the Patriots are up by 5 touchdowns with 4 minutes left.

Until Barack Obama actually has enough delegates to say that he has won, it's not technically over, and we'd be fools to expect the media to report it as such. They've got no incentive to go out on a limb, and who could blame them? As long as the campaign continues, they have something to do; their central role in the political universe is validated, their egos rubbed, and their opportunities for career advancement -- and higher ratings -- continue unabated.

Nobody should be surprised by this. Until it's actually over, it won't be reported as such. So what? When it all gets too annoying, just turn them off. Don't waste your time getting aggravated. Obama will be the nominee no matter what.

So here we are. Barack Obama absolutely, 100% will be our nominee, yet paradoxically, we still need to figure out how that's going to happen. Yes, it's a strange season. But despite all the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton hope to kick up, her prospects of winning are dead. And yet -- again paradoxically -- Hillary Clinton's campaign is still relevant, and her candidacy lives on.

Clinton's eventual defeat is going to be a watershed moment for the Democratic Party. It will be a final divorce from the politics of the Clintons. We're going through a messy separation right now, and to pretend that process doesn't matter would be just as dumb as pretending that Hillary Clinton might still be the nominee. So it's very important I think for us as Democrats to document the reasons for the rejection of Clinton -- her lies, her embrace of right-wing foreign policy, her adoption of race-baiting, her reactionary rhetoric and guilt-by-association sickness.

The one thing we can be certain of is where we are going. There is no whether or if. There's only how and when. It's Barack Obama now. We're taking over the party.