Barack Obama learned that on Tuesday when after 11 straight wins, while closing in the polls, he lost three states to Hillary Clinton.

Now consider John McCain’s apparent free lunch. Charles Krauthammer says the man makes him believe in resurrection. Last summer McCain was flying commercial, riding in the back of the plane next to the toilets. On Tuesday he sewed up the Republican Presidential nomination. Amazing.

As the panelists on Inside Washington observed this weekend, the economy is tanking, and we’re in an unpopular war with a lame-duck unpopular president as Commander-in-Chief, all of which would appear to be a heavy burden for McCain and tailor-made for a Democratic victory in November.

The Democrats? They’re too busy fighting each other to beat up on McCain...says Clinton, “Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign. I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002.” Sounds like Clinton and McCain are running mates.

One of Obama’s top advisers, Samantha Power, shot off her mouth to reporter Gerri Peev of The Scotsman newspaper, telling her that Clinton, “…is a monster…she is stooping to anything.” Power, born in Dublin, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School and a Pulitzer prize-winning author, is now off the campaign.

So McCain, as Politico’s Jonathan Martin notes in this week’s Inside Washington, has the whole gym to himself. He can raise money, of which he hasn’t very much. He can hire staff—he hasn’t had many bodies in his ad hoc campaign, and he can start thinking seriously about policy positions other than where he stands on the war in Iraq. What a gift. For now.

You can shoot free throws all day long when you’re in the gym by yourself, but it will never sharpen your game.