First off, I did not see this one coming. The editorial page of the NYT endorsed Clinton and so this piece is a serious slap on the wrist.

CNN’s pro-Clinton coverage continued in full steam last night. What is most interesting however is how the coverage broke down racially.

Below are statements from a piece called “The Clinton campaign: What’s Next?” and “The Obama Campaign: What’s next?” I haven’t included all the comments but two of the commentators included below are white, and two are African-American. Can you guess who made which statements?

“At some point, facts are stubborn things. Sen. Obama has extraordinary talent. He took 35,000 people to a rally in a primary. He spent $11 million on advertising. That’s 9,950 ads… ad he lost… he ran against a candidate who has been hammered and pounded and yet she won. I think these things do matter, and they may matter to superdelegates.”

“I think its’ been a key test for Barack Obama to not only withstand these attacks, but to weather the storm. And clearly tonight, if you look at the margin, he’s weathered the storm. He’s weathered the attacks on his former pastor. He’s weathered the storm on the statements he made in San Francisco.”

“He was closing in on Clinton in Pennsylvania. he was getting down to three, four, five points in some of the polls… I think what [Clinton’s larger win] suggests is that as he was closing, not only did he stall, but he actually ot hirt in the white community by these controversies.”

“If you look at the numbers, the question is, how can she expand her base? She can’t. So in order to go after [Obama], you’ve got to cut him up. You got to cut him down, drive up his negatives. They don’t care if her negatives go even higher. They have to win.”

Indeed, was what fascinating was how much the racial divide was reflected in the coverage last night. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the CNN studio after the camera’s are shut off, I’m wondering how much of all this is show, and how much of it is getting very personal on the CNN stage.