... this speech will, in all likelihood, go over very well with those on the moderate left. They want desperately to believe that Obama still stands for racial reconciliation, and this speech will give them just enough to keep on believing. That will produce two important results for Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination.

First, it will silence the criticism from much of the mainstream media, which is likely to praise his speech, present sympathetic excerpts, and take Obama's reassurances at face value. There is a good chance that they will henceforth regard references to the Reverend Wright as unfair, as attempts to smear Obama through "guilt by association"--precisely the defense Obama has lamely been attempting to erect. And so the Reverend Wright will once again disappear from the mainstream media coverage of the election.

Second, this speech will staunch some of Obama's losses among Democratic voters. A mass desertion of disillusioned Obama supporters, combined with a complete loss by Obama of the white vote, is the only thing that could give Hillary Clinton the huge margins of victory she would need in the remaining primaries to make up her deficit in pledged delegates. And only by reducing or eliminating that lead and showing that she has powerful momentum late in the contest can she convince the superdelegates to take the nomination away from Obama. After this speech, that once again looks impossible, so Barack Obama is once again the clear presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.

As for the right, however, I expect that the main effect of this controversy will be to consolidate support for John McCain in a way even Hillary Clinton could not have done. In a contest between a man who sat in the pews Sunday after Sunday while his pastor bad-mouthed America, versus a war hero who endured torture for his country, no one on the right will even regard this as a choice.