Others wonder, as I do, whether it was wise for Barack Obama to go on Meet the Press this Sunday. Didn’t he claim he had no time to debate Hillary Clinton, since he was busy meeting voters out on the stump?

More importantly, there seems to be a good deal of downside (and virtually no upside) to his doing this. It only takes one bad answer or an hour of hard questions to get voters thinking that Obama is now a prisoner of his own bad narratives (Snobgate, Rev. Wright, etc.). And “He survived Russert” isn’t likely to change many votes, while one gaffe may.

So why do it? I suspect that this is an effort to convince the ultimate Inside-the-Beltway crowd–superdelegates–that everything is fine, just fine. See, he can say to them, even Russert can’t score any more points on me. This assumes that Russert won’t get the best of him and and that superdelegates are making their decisions in a vacuum. Obama may well best Russert. But the superdelegates are far more likely to take notice of upset wins, real or moral, for Clinton on Tuesday, than of Obama’s appearance on Meet The Press.

Far better for him to go win those two primaries resoundingly and silence the doubts. Campaigning for votes in critical states would seem to be the best use of his time now. But maybe he’s burned out and not as effective on the stump as he used to be.