Obama, McCain Plot Campaign Strategies as Clinton Exits

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

  Gentlemen, so Barack Obama, David, made three — those stops yesterday in Virginia. Last night, he had a secret meeting with Hillary Clinton. He's three days into sealing this nomination. How's he doing so far?

• DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times:

  So far you'd have to say pretty good. He's gotten the sort of what you might call the Martin Luther King bounce, people sort of appreciating the historic moment. You have an African-American nominee, and then him taking it right to Virginia.

  And to me, that visit underlines, first of all, the math has changed. Places like Virginia are in play. Places like out in the Rocky Mountain West are in play in the way they didn't use to be, because the Democratic Party is sort of on the march.

  But it underlines the importance of social identity. Kaine and Webb, the two Virginia politicians he saw there, won in Virginia as Democrats because they were clearly socially conservative on a character level, military, on other issues, talking about faith.

  And if Obama can come across as socially conservative, the sort of person — I don't mean on abortion and things like that, I just mean on his values, on the way people perceive his morality — if he can do that, he'll win places like Loudoun County, which is out near Dulles Airport, an incredibly fast-growing county.

  And if you win places like that, he really will do extraordinarily well in the fall. But it's about how people perceive — do they understand this guy? And so far they still really don't.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Mark, so he's gotten off to a smart beginning, or is it too early to know?

• MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:

  I think it's a little too early to know, but I do think that going into Virginia makes sense. It makes the Republicans and John McCain have to immediately begin to play defense, and that is defending territory that had been considered solidly Republican for the past 44 years.

  The truth is, Judy, that the Democrats have won a number of states where they have not been competitive presidentially. They've either the governorship and/or Senate seats in states like Kansas, and Montana, and Arizona, and Oklahoma, and Wyoming, and Virginia, and North Carolina.

  It's a little jump to move to the presidential level, less so in Virginia, I think, because of Jim Webb's victory there in 2006.

  I think that the stumble that Obama had was at the AIPAC speech, where he went before a skeptical group of strong Jewish, pro-Israel supporters, and was probably over the top, I think, in his uncritical endorsement of Israeli policy, to the extent that he had to back off having said that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel, and then had to back off later, 24 hours later, and say that, in fact, that would be open to negotiation between the two parties, after criticism from many in the Arab world and others in this country, and the Palestinian liberation authority, in particular.