Frank Rich leads this week's list of Winners and Sinners

Just when you thought the Democratic primary campaign would never end, Tim Russert came on MSNBC early Wednesday morning and said: It's over.

It may take a little longer for Hillary Clinton to absorb that reality, but it's already clear that the second week in May 2008 was a turning point in the history of American politics—and not just because Barack Obama will be the first African American nominee of a major political party.

Equally important is the fact that a large majority of the primary voters in North Carolina, and nearly half of them in the Hoosier State (the final tally gave Indiana to Clinton by a sliver—just eight tenths of one percent) used their ballots to declare that the chance to turn America in a new direction really is more important than the rantings of Barack Obama's former pastor.

After the Obama deluge, die-hard Clinton supporters like Ed Koch declared themselves "shocked" that "none of the allegations, with the respect of Wright ... have had any impact on [Obama's] polling"—shocked, and, presumably, deeply disappointed. But for the rest of us this "shock" was one of the most heartening events in the recent history of the United States. Despite the overwhelming efforts of the Russerts and the Gibsons and the Hannitys and the O'Reillys to make this election into a referendum on Jeremiah Wright, a majority of Democratic voters have declared that the economy and Iraq are actually the things that matter most.

This primary campaign was filled with painful echoes of 1968, when Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy dissipated so much of the left's energy by attacking each other instead of the Republicans. But that year the contest for the nominee did drag on until August; now it's clear that it is ending right now. For that reason and many others, I believe the general election will most closely resemble the 1960 battle, when young people flocked to John Kennedy because he offered the chance for a dramatic break with the past, and the campaign ended with a razor-thin victory for the Democrats.

"The GOP's hope that the media will do its part to continue to degrade our political discourse this way is understandable. It is, after all, Matt Drudge who rules their world. A lowly, Rush-Limbaugh-created, right-wing gossip-monger is the Walter Cronkite of their era." —Glenn Greenwald

Arianna Huffington: McCain has "such a passion for Iraq—that's his Viagra."
Stephen Colbert: "I guess the warning on that should be, 'If your erection lasts more than a hundred years, pull out!'"