After today, Early Returns will be on hiatus until the autumn, when we'll start blogging about the November election. Bummer, right? But before the curtain drops, there's still a bit of post-primary analysis left to be done, as Capitolwire points out:

"First, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review offers a story in which U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Allegheny, said Clinton outworked Obama in Western Pennsylvania, and that Obama still needs to 'demonstrate he can connect with blue-collar, working-class people.' The Patriot-News of Harrisburg has an analysis that contends Obama's problem wasn't so much with white voters as it was with women voters, who put Clinton over the top. But The Philadelphia Inquirer's Annette John-Hall writes in a column today that Gov. Ed Rendell was prophetic when he said some conservative Pennsylvanians may be reluctant to, as John-Hall put it, 'bring themselves to pull the lever for a black man for president.'"

... Some more number-crunching: "The most striking instance of this was Clinton's victory among the elderly. Clinton won the elderly by 46 points in Ohio, but by just 26 in Pennsylvania. According to this hypothesis, what made up the gap is that the elderly constituted 14% of the electorate in Ohio, compared to 22% in Pennsylvania. The upshot of this is that if you take Clinton's vote margins in Pennsylvania, apply them to the demographics of Ohio, the latter would have been much closer."

In other words, maybe Obama is starting to figure out those working-class voters.

... "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton shouldn't share the Democratic presidential ticket unless they really want to. 'No, I don't think it's a good idea,' Pelosi said in an interview with CNN talk show host Larry King aired Thursday night. 'I think first of all the candidate, whoever he or she may be, should choose his or her own vice presidential candidate,' said Pelosi, who will chair the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. 'I think that's appropriate. That's where you would see the comfort level on not only how to run, but how to govern the country.'"

... Cheer up, Democrats!

"As Jonathan Cohn recently pointed out, the fact that Obama is running even or slightly ahead of McCain in the polls after enduring weeks of relentless pounding from Hillary Clinton is itself rather remarkable and speaks to the underlying realities of the 2008 election. And once the Democratic nomination is settled and the party unites behind its nominee, those realities should become readily apparent, even to the Washington pundits. According to every known leading indicator, 2008 should be a very good year for Democratic candidates at all levels."

Of course, there's also a chance that 2008 is a good for Dems in statehouses, governors' mansions and Congress -- but not in the White House.

Obama-rama

We assume this is tongue-in-cheek:

"It is time for Barack Obama to drop out. If Clinton had the good of the Democratic Party in mind, she would have given up her bid the day after the Mississippi primary, which Obama won by 25 points. The delegate math was as dismal for her campaign then as it is now, even after Pennsylvania, and she was facing down a six-week gulf before the next election. But Hillary Clinton isn't going to drop out. There simply isn't a function in her assembly code for throwing in the towel. Obama, on the other hand, is fully capable of it. And if he's really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he'll be elected president in 2012.

"Here's the roadmap: Obama drops out next week, stating that although he could almost certainly win the nomination by fighting it out until the convention in August, he is simply not willing to drag the party through a battle that will cripple its chances against John McCain. He then pledges to help support Sen. Clinton in her bid -- with full knowledge that she will not take him up on the offer. In one stroke, Obama will regain his messiah creds by making the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the party. His followers will be furious. The mere mention of Clinton's name will provoke unspeakable acts. They will abandon Clinton in numbers sufficient to hand McCain the election in November."

Magic 8 balls says -- outlook not good.

... Howard Kurtz can't fathom why the Rev. Wright won't just sew his pie hole shut until November:

"Just when the Jeremiah Wright furor seemed to be dying down, the ex-pastor is back and suddenly inescapable. On the tube with Bill Moyers. Speaking to the NAACP. Showing up Monday at the National Press Club. There it was yesterday, that endless loop of Wright shouting 'God damn America' over and over. Yet another opportunity to talk about how he thinks the US of KKK-A created the AIDS virus to kill blacks. This is rather amazing. At great political risk to himself, Obama refused to disavow Wright even as he tried to distance himself from the reverend's more inflammatory rhetoric. Wright might have repaid the favor to the man whose wedding he handled by laying low, at least until November. Instead, Wright is mounting a media blitz that he has to know -- has to know -- is going to damage the most famous member of his former church. No matter how reasonable he sounds, he just reignites the controversy and throws his friend under the bus."

... "After 30 years of railing for separation of church and state, Bill Moyers comes to the aid of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright."

Hill and Bill

Is Hillary a "fighter"? Or is she just obsessed with winning? And is she so obsessed that she would consider staying in the race even after losing the Democratic nomination?

"Or so all the political experts take for granted [that she'd drop out]. Most probably, they are right. But they've overlooked one alternative possibility. One way does exist for Clinton to continue to run even after losing the Democratic nomination. She could run as an Independent. Not likely, of course. But not impossible. This thought first occurred to me while watching a clip of Clinton being interviewed on TV the morning after her Pennsylvania victory. She was, I realized, totally consumed and utterly obsessed by the contest she's now engaged in. Political contests do of course send an addictive surge of adrenaline through almost all of those engaged in them. But fighting to become president has become Clinton's entire life, her very reason for existing. A day later I came upon a blog by an American political commentator, Andrew Sullivan, that eloquently expressed my own thoughts. Clinton can't win the Democratic nomination, he wrote, 'But she won't leave. She will never leave.'"

Such loveley place, such a lovely face.

... Will Hillary get the Tarheel debate she wants so badly?

"Clinton continued pressing Obama for a debate here this morning, saying that each state has a unique set of issues that deserve discussion. Clinton, joined outside a fire house near Camp Lejune by retired military leaders, told several hundred supporters that she was happy the campaign has continued in North Carolina, because there is 'no better place to be in the springtime.'"

Paris maybe? Just putting it out there.

The other side of the ticket

I against the tax cut before I was for it:

"On May 26, 2001, after then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) cast his vote against President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, he trudged back to his office, convinced, he recalled, that he had been the lone Republican to oppose the largest tax cut in two decades. But Chafee's staff told him that one other Republican, who had largely avoided the grueling efforts at compromise, had joined him in dissent. That senator, John McCain, was marching to his own beat, Chafee said, impervious to pressure from either side. Now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, however, McCain is marching straight down the party line. The economic package he has laid out embraces many of the tax policies he once decried: extending Bush's tax cuts he voted against, offering investment tax breaks he once believed would have little economic benefit and granting the long-held wishes of tax lobbyists he has often mocked."

Also known, in the Republican parlance, as a flip-flop. Though we have this sneaking suspicion that the GOP will say: flip-flop? What flip-flop? This is merely an example of a man's evolving political philosophy. Of a man who is thoughtful enough to reconsider an issue and change his mind. Oh, here we go:

"Said J.D. Foster, a former Bush White House and Treasury tax policy expert, now at the Heritage Foundation: 'It's logical that he wouldn't be repeating the arguments he made then. We all learn from experience.'"

Ciao. It's been real.