Because the choice between Obama and McCain will come down to Change versus Race. And Team Obama is smart enough to make McCain pay for a race-based campaign.

Obama owns Change. It’s one big reason he beat Clinton, Edwards, et al.

That one-word Change message gets ridiculed. It would be worthy of ridicule if change did not happen to be exactly what the American people want this year.

They’re tired of Bush, they’re tired of Cheney, they’re tired of war, they’re tired of a lousy economy and they’re tired of a federal government that seems deaf, dumb, blind and incompetent. They want change.

That’s the big reason Obama won. But there also are a lot of little reasons. Like, the Clintons forgot to count. They forgot that delegates count. Forgot that caucuses, not just big-state primaries, also pick delegates. And forgot that delegates are apportioned by congressional districts.

How did Team Clinton miss this key to the nomination when they had – supposedly – all the delegate-counting geniuses of the Democratic establishment, from Harold Ickes down?

Here’s how McCain can try to win – and how Obama can counter him:

• “I’m for Change too.” Won’t wash. Too old. Obama will make McCain look like Bob Dole running for George Bush’s third term.
  
• “I’m experienced; he’s not.” Like the experience to keep us in Iraq for 100 years? No thanks.
  
• “I’m white; he’s not.” No, McCain won’t try this. But some Republicans will. And McCain will get stuck with it.
  
• “Remember Jeremiah Wright.” (A variation of the above.) Never has a Democrat gotten in so much trouble because he DID go to church. But Obama denounced Wright and quit his church. There’s nothing left to do, unless he becomes an atheist.

Obama will not win North Carolina. Democratic hopes spring eternal – or at least every four years around this time – but it ain’t happening here this year.

If it does, it means Obama is winning a national landslide.

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