Reply #50: The primaries are over when the candidate wins the amount of delegates necessary for the nomination

[Hippo_Tron]

Because barring the death or refusal of the candidate to accept the nomination, nothing can be done to change the fact that they will be the nominee.

It was appropriate to treat Kerry as the nominee in March when he won the required number of delegates. To pretend that primaries were still relevant would have been pointless. Bush certainly wasn't pretending that it was still primary season and he certainly didn't wait until after the convention to start attacking Kerry.