Sorting through a pile of words on Obama and Clinton

This is one of those days on which to save the front page of a newspaper for posterity.

Sen. Barack Obama’s clinching of the Democratic Party presidential nomination is historic – and I’d say the same thing if Sen. Hillary Clinton reached the same plateau.

This primary campaign set new standards for how long it took to decide the outcome and how much it cost the candidates. Having a black man and white woman – and no white male – in the battle to the end had never occurred in the Democratic Party

How did it happen is the subject of much writing and conversation nationally and globally.

Larry Eichel of the Philadelphia Inquirer provides a concise, and in my view, good analysis.

It starts:

In the saga of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s defeat, all roads lead back to the beginning. Back to Iowa.

Before her loss in that state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, which took place Jan. 3, she still looked like the near-certain winner of her party’s presidential nomination.

Read the story here.

The Chicago Tribune provided five reasons he won and five reasons she lost. You can find them here.

Finally, Obama and Clinton each delivered a fine post-primary speech. Here is the text of Obama’s comments in St. Paul, Minn.

And here are the prepared remarks for the speech Clinton made in New York.