Fresh material from OpenLeft’s Chris Bowers and the L.A. Times point toward the likely starting point for the general election campaign.

Bowers makes some pretty educated guesses about the remainder of the Democratic primaries and caucuses to conclude that “that the Democratic nomination campaign is pretty much over.”  Even with assumptions favorable to Hillary Clinton:

Overall, it is extremely unlikely that Clinton will be able to reduce Obama’s pledged delegate advantage to below 150 before the convention. If things go exceptionally well for her and surpass even these already rosy projections, then she will still have to make up at least 130 delegates from Florida, Michigan, superdelegates and Edwards delegates. That doesn’t seem very likely in and of itself, but it is still her best case scenario based on current polling.

Bowers leaves out Puerto Rico, but even including it leaves Clinton as a long-shot to catch Barack Obama.

The L.A. Times reports on its poll with Bloomberg (detailed results) covering both the Democratic race and the general election.  Democratic voters whose home states have yet to hold primaries or caucuses still prefer Clinton over Obama by 13-points.  However, the pattern has been for that gap to narrow — and often reverse — by the time ballots are counted in each state.  Accordingly, Bowers is likely correct that Obama is now the clear favorite to win the Democratic nomination.

As for the general election, I note in passing that Ed Morrissey believes the sample is skewed in favor of the Democrats.  However, recent party identification figures from Gallup suggest the sample actually underweights both Democrats and Republicans by roughly the same amount.  Thus, reweighting by party ID likely would not have changed the overall results.

The poll shows John McCain leading Obama 44%-42%, well within the margin of error.  The internal numbers are largely consistent with the FOX poll analyzed back on February 13, except that independents are more evenly split in this poll (though both polls were within the margin of error for a subsample), while McCain still attracts more Democrats than Obama attracts Republicans.

McCain leads Obama on most every individual issue polled.  McCain was seen as the candidate who would have the best handle on terrorism (58%-21%), Iraq (47%-34%), illegal immigration (40%-29%), and the economy (42%-34%).  Obama leads only on the issue of healthcare (44%-30%).  Oddly enough, the candidates are a toss-up on taxes (McCain 40%, Obama 38%).

This campaign cycle, however, has tended to be more about personal qualities than issues.  The closeness of the topline numbers in light of the gap on issues tells you that dynamic still holds, as do the poll questions on personal qualities.  The poll shows that voters clearly believe McCain has the right experience (53%-22%) and give a slight edge to him as the strongest leader (41%-35%).  But voters pick Obama as the candidate to change the way things are done in DC by a lopsided 55%-20% margin.

Both likely candidates thus face challenges.  McCain, as noted yesterday, will likely have to convince some more voters that his experience makes him the candidate more likely to change business as usual in DC, or that the change Obama offers is a left-liberal agenda people do not want.  Obama will probably argue — as he has with Hillary Clinton — that McCain’s experience shows his bad judgment on issues like Iraq and that he is not the agent of change in the race.  He will almost certainly try to erode McCain’s standing among Democrats by trying to brand a McCain presidency as a third Bush term (which of course also goes to the issue of change).

In theory, McCain should have an edge over the course of a campaign.  Not only does McCain already enjoy an advantage on most issues (and should be able to get one on taxes), his signature issue of campaign finance reform (however much I might disagree with his approach) and related work on issues like lobbying reform match up well with what voters tell pollsters they generally mean by “change.”  Thus, in theory, he should be able to erode Obama’s current advantage on his strongest trait.

However, Obama has proven himself to be a generally eloquent stump speaker and deft debater who will be difficult for McCain and his surrogates to undermine.  In addition, there will be what Donald Rumsfeld called the “known unknowns” (e.g., conditions in the economy and Iraq, and how voters react to them) and the “unknown unknowns” (i.e.,  the unknown, silly).  Thus, there is the usual caveat about early polling not being worth a great deal in the end.  But we at least have a decent idea now of what the end of the beginning looks like.