Well, it’s time to move over, Pastor of Disaster. If anything will put an end to the Barack Obama campaign, I’d put my money on this guy:

Former President Jimmy Carter has given Barack Obama a major boost by calling for the bitter Democratic nomination battle to end on June 3rd and speaking glowingly of his ability to “transform the image” of America.

Jimmy Carter’s comments are a blow to Hillary Clinton.

Mr Carter did not formally endorse Mr Obama but in an interview with The Daily Telegraph made crystal clear where his sympathies lie. He even sketched out the kind of inaugural address the first black United States president could deliver.

Coming from the most distinguished of some 300 uncommitted “super-delegates” - the Democratic party leaders who will crown their party’s nominee - Mr Carter’s new public stance is a blow to Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.

“I don’t see any reason at all to continue after June 3rd when we know who got the most [pledged] delegates, who got the most popular votes, who won the most states and so forth,” said Mr Carter, 83.

…

It would be “too bad” and damaging to the party if the battle went to the nomination, he said. The role of super-delegates, he argued, was to swing behind the winner chosen by the voters and not to usurp them.

Mr Carter, who is promoting a new book called “A Remarkable Mother” about his mother Lillian, who died 25 years ago aged 85, indicated that he felt a close personal bond with Mr Obama.

Both had mothers who worked to overcome racial divisions and who moved abroad in the 1960s to help the disadvantaged - Mrs Carter as a Peace Corps volunteer in India and Mr Obama’s mother as an anthropologist in Indonesia.

“They were very similar in not being bound by previous custom and willing to break taboos and mores that society establishes that they considered to be inappropriate,” Mr Carter said.

His mother, whom he adored, would “be delighted I think at the prospect of a black man being elected president”. In an aside that will give scant comfort to Mrs Clinton, he added: “And she would be pleased - I wouldn’t say delighted - at the prospect of a woman being president.”