A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

What, pray tell, is the point of this?

Senator Barack Obama has chosen to spend Tuesday night not in Kentucky or Oregon, the two states that will be holding their primaries that day, or even at his home in Chicago. Instead, Mr. Obama's staff announced on Saturday, he will be returning to Iowa, where he won the Democratic caucuses way back in January and has at least two good reasons to revisit now.

Much more than nostalgia seems to have motivated that decision. If things continue to go as well for Mr. Obama this week as they have so far this month, with a romp in North Carolina, a strong showing in Indiana and daily growth in his support among party superdelegates, he could actually end up with enough pledged delegates to proclaim, without fear of contradiction, that he is now the Democratic nominee for president.

If Obama doesn't have 2,025 delegates--2,209 if we count Florida and Michigan--then he is not yet the Democratic nominee for President and cannot claim that he is "without fear of contradiction." I know that he is on his way and I know that there is next to no chance whatsoever that he can be stopped, but there is nothing magical about this coming Tuesday that will allow Obama to claim victory.

If this is just a big, giant publicity stunt by the Obama campaign to get attention, then I suppose that the campaign is to be applauded for the effort to ensure that their candidate gets as much publicity as possible. But there is no reason whatsoever for the press to fall for it.