On a just concluded conference call with Howard Wolfson, Mark Penn, and Guy Cecil of the Clinton campaign discussing the state of the race, a reporter asked how it was that Obama managed to cut into Clinton's core constituencies in last night's Potomac Primary, specifically referencing his winning lower income voters.

Mark Penn responded that gender and "other classifications" needed to be taken into consideration, but then declared that it was clear "Senator Obama is now the Washington candidate coming out of this primary." To be fair, that remark can be interpreted a very benign way, but given the context and the past history of the Clinton campaign, my mind immediately focused on the darker possibility, which was that this was yet another attempt to minimize Obama's victory by painting him as a "black candidate."