William Kristol:

1. On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary — by 41 points. I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin. The crucial swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania (whose primaries Obama also lost to Hillary Clinton) have a fair number of West Virginia-type working-class, culturally conservative voters. The Obama campaign can’t be confident about his prospects there in the fall.

2. On Thursday, the California Supreme Court did precisely what much of the American public doesn’t want judges doing: it made social policy from the bench. With a 4-to-3 majority, the judges chose not to defer to a ballot initiative approved by 61 percent of California voters eight years ago, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court redefined marriage in that state, helping to highlight the issues of same-sex marriage and judicial activism for the 2004 presidential campaign. Now the California court has conveniently stepped up to the plate.

Obama’s campaign issued a statement that its candidate “respects the decision of the California Supreme Court.” The McCain campaign, by contrast, said it recognized “the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution ... John McCain doesn’t believe judges should be making these decisions.” Since the next president will almost certainly have one Supreme Court appointment, and could have two or three, this difference on judicial philosophy could well matter to voters — and in a way that should help McCain.

Furthermore, the action of the California court will remind voters of the Defense of Marriage Act, which says a state is not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and which was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. McCain voted for and supports it. Obama opposes it.

3. It was also on Thursday that President Bush spoke before Israel’s Knesset. He denounced those who “seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” This “foolish delusion,” Bush claimed, yields “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

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Here's another reason, from a lifelong Democrat, that might make Republicans breathe a little easier:

"There's just been an attitude that if you aren't voting for Barack Obama, then you're a racist," said Cowley, 49, a mother of four from Massachusetts who has vowed to never back the senator from Illinois. "I just find that intolerable. I feel like when the members of the media talk about how [Obama's supporters] would react, they say, 'Well, we can't take the vote away from African Americans.' Well, excuse me, there's a higher percentage of women."

A Democratic race that a couple of months ago was celebrated as a march toward history -- the chance to nominate the nation's first woman or African American as a major-party candidate -- threatens to leave lingering bitterness, especially among Clinton supporters, whose candidate is running out of ways to win.