Give Credit to Hillary Clinton ...

She has been able to do what, for nearly two weeks, Barack Obama has not -- change the subject away from Rev. Wright. Bosnia-gate has trumped pastor-gate as the scandal du news cycle. It must be maddening for the Clintons, who have lied so effortlessly and compulsively for so long, to now see their penchant for prevarication suddenly turn against them.

Meanwhile, as the Democrats obliterate one another, John McCain gets to sit pretty and watch his favorability ratings soar. Nobody's taken a swipe at him since the name "Mitt Romney" still meant something.

The difference? While Republicans mostly opted for winner-take-all primaries, Democrats, by and large, chose a proportional-winner system. The GOP race thus wrapped up quickly, with even close popular-vote victories amounting to massive delegate gains. On the Democratic side, though, even defeats yielded delegates, preventing either candidate from ever falling too far behind.

And while, as a matter of principle, there's something commendable about a party that calls itself "Democrat" opting for the more democratic means of selection, as a matter of politics, it's been utterly self-destructive. The ongoing Democratic civil war now makes conceivable, or even likely, the possibility that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago -- that the Republican candidate might actually win in November.