The primaries are still under way, and Sen. Hillary Clinton is still very much in the Democratic race. But Tuesday night in Madison, Wis., Sen. Barack Obama in effect launched his side of the general election campaign he fully expects to wage in November. Speaking in a key swing state, he declared the advent of "The New American Majority" he had first envisioned in a speech in New Hampshire, and launched into his most extensive, prime-time attack yet on the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. (Obama had begun that pivot two days ago, when it became clear that he was going to win the Potomac Primary.) On Tuesday night, Hillary was all but forgotten in Obamaland.

Before a roaring crowd of 17,000, Obama slipped McCain into the slot that had been reserved for Clinton for months--the one about representing the past, not the future. The Illinois senator attacked McCain on the war in Iraq (the 100-year pledge) and his recent fealty to George Bush's tax cuts. "The Straight Talk Express lost its wheels!" Obama said.

The moment he finished, the cable networks switched to McCain's victory speech in Northern Virginia. Maybe the fall campaign won’t be framed in terms of "future and past," but at first glance, at least visually, it sure looked that way.
 
A new rule of politics should be: never speak after Obama, especially after Obama electrifies a rally. And yet McCain showed how feisty he is, and what a formidable foe he could be as he pledged a strong defense of the country's security. "We are the makers of history, not its victims," McCain declared.

Then McCain took on Obama directly, focusing on the Democrat’s signature obsession with the idea of hope. "Hope is a powerful thing," said McCain, but there is no hope in "rhetoric rather than sound ideas. That's not a not a promise of hope, it's a platitude." McCain seemed to dismiss Obama as a callow narcissist without mentioning his name. "I don't seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me.

"I am fired up and ready to go!" he concluded, stealing one of Obama's signature lines.

Game on.  

Looking closely at the NBC exit polls from Virginia, I see numbers that will make delightful reading for the Barack Obama campaign--and a cause for deep concern in John McCain's camp. Obama, the figures show, is expanding the demographic reach of his surging Democratic candidacy, while McCain is hemmed in by his increasingly glaring failure to win over conservatives and evangelical Christians.

With a large turnout among Democrats and independents (anyone can vote in any primary in Virginia), Obama scored smashing victories over Hillary Clinton among groups with whom he needed to show strength. Everybody knows he has the African-American vote locked up tight, as well as young people, single men and affluent, well-educated voters. But the other winning percentages in Virginia are the news Tuesday night, and they are pretty powerful. According to the NBC exit polls, Obama carried:

-- women: 58 percent
-- white men: 55 percent
-- latino: 55 percent
-- 60 years old and older: 52 percent
-- those with incomes under $30,000: 68 percent
-- independents: 67 percent
-- Roman Catholics: 52 percent

As the campaign moves foward, Obama has to be able to argue that he can reach the whole country, and the Virginia numbers are the best evidence yet that he can. His weakest catagory is among white self-described Democrats--the most regular of the party regulars. But he is closing in on them.

The McCain story in Virginia is the story of a campaign in danger of slowing down at a critical moment. In this late-sesason battle with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, McCain needed a respectable showing among evangelicals and conservatives. He didn’t get it. More than a third of voters in the GOP primary described themselves as "very conservative"--and they voted for Huckabee over McCain by a breathtaking 70-21 percent margin. Among born again Christians--who were 47 percent of all voters in the primary--Huckabee won by a 66-26 percent margin. And among the two thirds of GOP primary voters who said they wanted abortions to be illegal in all or most circumstances, Huckabee won by a 57-34-percent margin.

McCain ended up winning Virginia--narrowly--but the exit polls must give him pause. Does McCain need Huckabee at his side to win a race in the fall? Perhaps not, but McCain needs the Huckabee voters, now more than ever.