I just posted this at MotherJones.com....

With Barack Obama's loss in South Dakota and win in Montana on Tuesday night, the primaries and caucuses are over. The senator from Illinois who ran an unconventional movement-esque campaign of and for change is the winner. He has bagged the most voter-determined delegates and a majority of the superdelegates commitments, enough to declare victory. The nation is heading toward a general election featuring a dramatic face-off between a progressive who opposed the Iraq war and a conservative who was a cheerleader for the war. A fresh face versus a Washington veteran. A onetime community organizer versus a former war hero. A 46-year-old black man versus a 71-year-old white man. Assuming the Democratic mantle, Obama declared in a speech before thousands in St. Paul, Minnesota, "This year must be different than all the rest." It will be. And hours earlier, John McCain, delivering a speech in New Orleans, used the word "change" almost three dozen times. But before the Obama-McCain clash throttles up, there is one last item of business for the Democrats: Hillary Clinton must concede.

Can Clinton harbor any hope of nullifying the verdict of the millions of voters who flocked to the primaries and caucuses in record numbers? That would be the political equivalent of nuclear warfare. To do so, Clinton, who spent the end of her campaign positioning herself as a count-every-vote champion, would have to become an anti-democratic renegade, challenging the outcome of the voting and confronting the party leadership, which has signaled its preference for allowing the pledged-delegate count to determine the final outcome.

On Tuesday, AP reported Clinton had told New York lawmakers she was open to being Obama's veep choice--a sign she won't push the button. And in her speech to supporters in New York on Tuesday night, Clinton was conciliatory toward Obama. She declared, "we stayed the course," depicting her hang-in-there strategy of the past two months as a cause, not a political tactic. She made no mention of the superdelegates, dropping her usual pitch for their support. But in a combative tone, she proclaimed, "I want the 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and to be heard." Heard? Respected? In what way? And by whom? By Obama? That was a statement ready-made for interpretation by pundits and analysts. "Where do we go from here?" she asked. She answered, "I will be making no decisions tonight." Speaking to her supporters, she said, I want to hear from you." And she noted that in the "coming days" she will be consulting with party leaders.

In the dwindling weeks of the race, she played it both ways: good Democrat and bad Democrat. The good Clinton ceased her attacks on Obama and stopped questioning whether he was qualified to be commander in chief. Yet, at the same time, the bad Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of Obama's win. Using fuzzy and misleading math, she claimed she had won more popular votes than Obama. Campaigning in Florida, she noted that its residents had "learned the hard way what happens when...the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner." At the Democratic Party's rules committee, Harold Ickes, a top Clinton adviser, angrily claimed that four of her delegates had been "hijacked" and threatened that Clinton would appeal the committee's compromise decision at the convention. Ickes' mad-as-hell performance, no doubt, reinforced the view held by some Clinton's supporters that Obama's triumph has come--at least, in part--as a result of unfairness and anti-Clinton bias.

Still, ever since the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, Clinton has managed to walk a careful line, keeping her post-primary options open without doing anything that could directly undermine an Obama candidacy in the general election. That allowed her to stay in the hunt--in case something precipitous happened to alter the race. It also permitted her to rack up a few more primary wins and continue to show her strength among blue-collar (or white) voters--which she could point to when arguing to superdelegates that she would be the better candidate to take on McCain in the fall.

But she can straddle no longer. On Tuesday night, MSNBC reported that Clinton wanted a private sit-down with Obama before conceding or embracing Obama as the nominee. Many party leaders--including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid--have said they have no patience for drawing out the race beyond the last primaries. Democratic figures--especially those backing Obama--have in recent weeks deliberately not called on Clinton to abandon her campaign. They have not been eager to force her out. But such courtesy will evaporate faster than desert rain in the "coming days."

It could well be that party leaders--out of kindness, respect, and worry (over whether her supporters will eventually swing behind Obama)--afford Clinton a few days to process her defeat. After all, this historic race was damn close, as so few nomination contests are. But this is politics, not therapy. So the grace period won't be long.

Understandably, the Senator from New York who almost became the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination has put off this decision for as long as she could. And her performance in the final weeks of the campaign has strengthened her future presidential prospects. Should Obama lose to McCain, Clinton and her supporters could use these late-contest wins to bolster an I-told-you-so argument that would come in handy for the 2012 campaign. But if she does not play nice soon, she puts her future within the party at great risk.

All things come to an end--even tight and historic presidential nomination contests. Wounds are tended to; they heal. Bad feelings subside. Deals are cut, if need be. Political parties can--and do--come together. And heading into what promises to be a damn tough campaign, Obama will need Clinton and her followers. In his victory speech, Obama hailed Clinton and exclaimed, "Let us begin to work together." As a calculating politician, Clinton can probably be expected to do the right thing. But with the Clintons--politicians of unusual fortitude and audacity--you never know. Now that all the party's polls are closed, the moment belongs to Obama. He is the champion. He has made history. He has become the strongest progressive Democratic nominee in a generation. And, for Hillary Clinton, the clock has run out.

UPDATE: Associated Press reported on Tuesday morning that Hillary Clinton was preparing to concede after the voting in South Dakota and Montana ends, but the Clinton campaign put out a statement that said, "The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening."

Celebrating her not-so-relevant victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday, Hillary Clinton provided people who dislike the Clintons with a reminder why they do so: she claimed she had won the popular vote:

More people across the country have voted for our campaign, more people have voted for us than for any candidate in the history of presidential primaries. We are winning the popular vote. Now, there can be no doubt, the people have spoken and you have chosen your candidate.

It was yet another example of how Team Clinton always goes beyond acceptable spin. The say-anything approach harks back to the "meaning of is" remark or the "I did not have sex" comment. Her claim to be the popular vote champion is a slippery and audacious rendering of the actual facts. If you go to RealClearPolitics.com, you will see that there are several ways to tally the popular votes. And the only way that Clinton "wins" is if you include the disputed the Michigan contest, where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. Clintonites have advocated counting all the 328,309 Clinton votes in the Michigan primary and awarding Obama none of the 238,168 uncommitted votes. Doing so is unfair and absurd.

Instead of parsing words, as Bill Clinton did, the Hillary Clinton campaign is parsing numbers. The campaign even produced a campaign ad touting her No. 1 standing in the popular vote race--which is now her last-gasp argument to the superdelegates. You're probably familiar with the blatant hypocrisy supporting her claim. Clinton had previously said that delegates would decide the election (e.g., not the popular vote) and that the Michigan race would not count. Well, oops. But it's precisely that sort of situational positioning that has caused long-term skepticism of the Clintons. In arguing to seat the disputed delegations of Michigan and Florida, she has proclaimed herself the champion of voters-come-first democracy. But at the same time, she is trying to persuade superdelegates they should not follow the outcome of the primaries and caucuses and instead vote for the second-place finisher. That she and her aides shamelessly present such a self-contradicting case (as if we're all too dumb to see through it) is a sign of desperation, arrogance or (most likely) both.

Fortunately, all this has to come to a conclusion soon. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe by the end of the week. It's clear that leading yet-undeclared superdelegates (like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) are restless and are ready to declare their loyalty to Obama to end this nomination battle. Clinton's fun-with-numbers does not appear to be winning the day. The only calculation left for her is whether to acknowledge the real math. It will be quite a sad finale to her historic though losing campaign if she concludes it with the Clintonian claim that she really won.

Okay, I was wrong--partially--when I speculated that the meeting of the Democratic Party's rules committee would be anti-climactic. There was a climax--even if it was possibly a faux climax. It was not produced by the committee. The panel did the predictable thing: it seated Florida's disputed delegation, giving each delegate half a vote, and it did essentially the same thing with Michigan, assigning the uncommitted votes to Barack Obama. So at the end of the (long day), Hillary Clinton netted more delegates, but Obama maintained his seemingly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates. That was what was expected of the Democratic insiders on the committee. What was unexpected: Harold Ickes' reaction at the end.

After the committee voted 19-8 in favor of the Michigan plan, Ickes, a top Clinton aide and a member of the committee, issued what will from now on be known as the Ickes Proclamation. He declared that the committee was hijacking delegates from Clinton. "I am stunned that we have the gall and chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters," he said. He presented a threat: "I submit to you that hijacking four delegates is not a good way to start down the path of party unity." And he dropped a bomb: Clinton reserved the right to appeal the decision before the credentials committee at the convention.

It was as if Ickes was saying, "Watch out, we're going to the mattresses." Too bad he's not heavier; otherwise, James Gandolfini could play him in the HBO movie.

But his threat was odd. It could only put off the superdelegates that Clinton still hopes--against hope--to convince. It also undermined one possible Clinton game plan: be a good soldier, do everything possible to help Obama win, and then, should he lose to John McCain, proclaim, "I told you so" and automatically become the Democratic front-runner for 2012. And with all his talk of "hijacking" and top-down elitism, Ickes was questioning the legitimacy of the process that is on the verge of handing Obama the top prize. Ickes was pushing a rhetorical point--Obama's win ain't legit--that Clinton herself has made.

Then there's the substance of Ickes' outrage. He pilloried his fellow rules committee members for supposedly overriding the will of Democratic voters in Michigan. They really hadn't. It was impossible to know the will of Michigan Ds because Obama was not on the ballot for the state's disputed primary contest. But handing delegates only to Clinton would have been patently unfair. That aside, Ickes' argument was situational, not principled. His campaign's overall strategy (and its only chance) is to persuade superdelegates to choose Clinton even if Obama has won more delegates in the primaries and caucuses. So who's the true fan of voter-first, small-d democracy?

Ultimately, Ickes' threat may not matter. If Clinton suspends her campaign shortly after the primaries end on Tuesday and (after a period of mourning) gets on board the Obama express, Ickes tough words will be forgotten. Clinton even could raise the issue at the convention as the losing candidate in a fashion that would not be too disruptive--that is, if she has endorsed Obama and does not tie the Michigan fight to any outcome in the nomination process. But if she and Ickes and the rest of the Clinton posse continue to question the legitimacy of Obama's victory, there will be problems. For the moment, they can play it both ways. But they soon have to decide if their threats are empty or real.

Hillary Clinton is really pandering, as her campaign whimpers to a conclusion. In an interview on Wednesday with AP, she said she would support Michigan and Florida regarding their disputed delegations no matter what:

I will consult with Floridians and the voters in Michigan because it's really their voices that are being ignored and their votes that are being discounted, and I'll support whatever the elected officials and the voters in those two states want to do.

But wait a minute; those states violated Democratic Party rules--rules that at one time Clinton supported. Now she's saying that Dems in those naughty states ought to decide what happens to their delegations. That's just wrong. And it's also wrong for her to vow--as she did--a convention fight over these delegations, if the party does not work something out before then.

It's almost as if Clinton is grasping for a cause to justify her ongoing campaigning. And, as AP notes, seating the Michigan and Florida delegations in a manner most favorable to Clinton would still leave her trailing Obama in voter-determined (or pledged) delegates. But seating the delegations in such a fashion would bolster her bogus argument that she has done better in the popular vote. That claim only holds up if one adds to Clinton's tally the 328,309 votes she received in Michigan and award Obama zero votes from that state. Obama's name was not on the ballot for the disputed primary, but "uncommitted"--which was something of a stand-in for Obama--drew 238,168 votes. In any event, it is not reasonable for Clinton and her crowd to base their popular vote claim on the results in Michigan's unsanctioned contest.

Campaigning in Florida, Clinton, relying on her fuzzy math, hinted that Obama's victory might not be legitimate. She declared that Floridians in 2000 "learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren't counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner. The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: If any votes aren't counted, the will of the people isn't realized and our democracy is diminished."

Note her reference to the "candidate with fewer votes."

Clinton refuses to let go of her argument. She's no longer attacking Obama, but she appears to be residing somewhere between resignation and fighting on. She won't blast him, but she insinuates he's not won fair and square. Worse, in this AP interview, she hinted that she might continue her effort to win over superdelegates (and maybe even pledged delegates for Obama) after the primaries end on June 3. That would be going nuclear. It would tear the party apart. You think Obama and his supporters would roll over?

As Clinton comes to terms with what seems to be defeat, she is trying to have it both ways. She's doing nothing overt to undermine the likely nominee of her party, but she ain't bowing out and she keeps on insisting her party's making a big mistake. None of this is too much of a drag on Obama at the moment. But come June 3--or thereabouts--Clinton is going to have to quit or fire off one helluva shot. Judgment Day is nearing.

I'm traveling today and may not be able to post. But don't worry nothing that happens in Kentucky or Oregon today will change anything. In fact, what I wrote below will only be more relevant, as Hillary Clinton moves (or is pushed) toward the moment when she will have to realize her dream is over (at least for now). With only two small states--Montana and South Dakota--and Puerto Rico left, what can she hope for? Not much, except a bolt out of the blue that renders Barack Obama undeniably unelectable. Her campaign is now a faith-based endeavor. She and her supporters (see below) ought to get on with the uncomfortable exercise of dealing with reality.

Okay, we have a new meme: women supporting Hillary Clinton are so pissed off they will not vote for Barack Obama in the fall against John McCain. The Washington Post gives this narrative front-page oomph with a story that focuses on several angry Democratic women voters--that is, three--including one who vows to vote for McCain instead of Obama. Anecdotal evidence aside, the story refers to a recent Post/ABC News poll that found that a quarter of Clinton supporters said they will vote for McCain over Obama (and a similar number of Obama supporters said they would do the same if Clinton won the nomination).

My hunch is that the passions--and acrimony--will cool down in the months ahead. But it's clear that there's been a messy patch of bad feelings generated on both sides of the black-versus-woman Democratic contest. (The Post recently reported on the blatant racism encountered by Obama campaign workers on the ground.) But these Democratic women who are disappointed that HRC will not become the breaker of the ultimate glass ceiling are going t have to get over it. The obvious point is, do they want to vote for a guy who will appoint Supreme Court justices likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, who recently voted against a bill that would remove restrictions on a woman's right to bring an equal pay lawsuit, and who will keep the Iraq war going and going and going?

And there's more. McCain has been disrespectful and misogynistic regarding Hillary Clinton, their champion. In an infamous incident during this campaign, he laughed along when a voter asked him, "How do we beat the bitch?" In fact, he replied, "That's an excellent question." See for yourself:

Ten years ago, he cracked a joke making fun of Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and Janet Reno that the Post dubbed "too vicious to print." Other major news outfits also refused to print or broadcast the joke, thus doing a disservice to the public by failing to show this nasty side of McCain. In that pre-YouTube era in Salon, I published the gag:

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?

Because her father is Janet Reno.

Kinda crude, right?

I know it's tough to be rejected. Most of us have been at some time. And, no doubt, some voices in the media have lashed out at Clinton for the wrong reasons, treating her unfairly because she's a dame. So gals for Clinton have cause to be mad and discouraged--and Obama will have to gently court this bloc. Yet ultimately these spurned voters will have to dump the anger and come to terms with the reality that politics, like life, often presents you with let-downs and imperfect choices. Sure, that may be easy for a guy to say. But if these women settle for an old fellow who laughs when Clinton is called a bitch, they're going to end up stuck in a bad relationship.

What is she thinking?

That seems to be the question of the moment That is--even after her whopping (though irrelevant) win in West Virginia--why is Hillary Clinton fighting on after the bell has rung? And one new meme has developed: it's all about 2012.

Tom Edsall writes,

Under one scenario - Obama gets the nomination but loses to John McCain - Clinton could begin her 2012 campaign on November 5, 2008, as a vindicated politician, using the narrative that she was the better candidate.

And Charles Hurt of The New York Post notes:

With no hope of winning her party's nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton is running out the clock by laying the foundation for her political future, circa 2012. As she seems to float in and out of reality on the campaign trail, it is so easy to dismiss her as delusional. She is not.

I'm proud to be a founding member of this meme. Before Hurt and Edsall posted, I put up my own version of the this-is-all-about-2012 theory:

Why is Hillary Clinton still in the race?

....[C]ommentators have come up with several obvious explanations:

* She wants to remain in the hunt just in case something happens. (A video appears of Wright calling for armed revolution? Fox News produces Obama's Secret Muslim Membership card?)

* She is staying in for one last round of fundraising. (Her campaign is $20 million in debt and owes her $11 million.)

* She wants to end her historic campaign with a string of victories: West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. (Puerto Rico? She is a senator from New York.)

* And the most obvious of them all: she's not yet ready to face the music.

No doubt, a combo of these rationales is fueling Clinton's impossible ride. But let me add one more to the mix: Clinton is setting up the biggest I-told-you-so in recent American political history.

Assume Obama is the nominee and imagine that he loses to McCain in the fall. Where would that leave Clinton? She would be able to wag her finger at her party, and she wouldn't even have to say those haughty words. She and her die-hard confederates would be able to note simply and smugly, We did try to warn you. In the following four years, they would remind reporters, party leaders, Democratic voters, and everyone else, over and over, that they had said that Obama was unelectable, that they had said he could not win blue-collar (that is, white) voters. This Clinton chorus would not cease singing this song for a nanosecond. Can't you just see Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe lecturing cable news hosts on this point? Hiding their schadenfreude--just barely--they would note that they had won the fundamental argument of 2008: who understands American voters the best? And in this scenario, Hillary Clinton would be well-positioned for 2012. In fact, she would have such bragging rights as to be able to question any other Democrat's entry into the presidential contest. She might even expect the party this time to hand her the nomination on a platter--accompanied with one big apology.

....By staying in the race, Clinton has been--and will be--able to pocket more of those blue-collar voters. And with a decisive win in Puerto Rico on June 1, she could cut into Obama's edge in the popular vote. Even if she has no shot at coaxing superdelegates with her blue-collar argument, she will be bolstering her you-should've-listened-to-me argument, in case the voters in the general election send Obama packing.

So are the clever, cunning and never-say-die Clintons already calculating an alternative path to the White House, a course that will take another four and a half years? And is it an insult or a compliment to suggest they are? Such a plan--or is it a scheme?--would entail that Hillary Clinton not bloody Obama much more, for that would risk alienating certain Democratic voters (most notably, blacks) even more than they have been. And for this strategy to work, she will have to be seen--after an Obama defeat--as having done all she could for him in the general election.

The good news for Obama-lovers and Hillary-haters: her presidential ambitions (for 2012, not 2008) offer an incentive for her to be a gracious loser and an enthusiastic Obama supporter once she withdraws from the nomination race. The bad news? if her calculations are right, she may be out of the presidential race for only a few months and then back in for another four years.

Tell me what you think in the comments below. And read my full piece here.

Not every primary matters. Especially West Virginia.

Before Election Day had even arrived, Barack Obama gave an upbeat speech there in which he conceded that Hillary Clinton had more support in the state, and she appeared at a campaign rally and spoke of her win to come, but in not-so-jubilant terms. Yes, the loser was upbeat, the winner reserved. That's because the outcome was practically irrelevant. Up to now in the 2008 campaign, it seemed that just about each new primary was significant. First, there was the upset in Iowa. Then the comeback in New Hampshire. Next, Nevada and South Carolina and the states of Super Tuesday showed the race was competitive. After that, Obama tore through a winning streak that HRC did not slow until Ohio and Texas. This led to the battle of Pennsylvania. She won that contest, but her victory there ended up not meaning a lot when she failed to stomp Obama in Indiana and he creamed her in North Carolina.

A lot of states have played crucial roles in this nominating contest--far more so than in the Republican race--but the remaining primaries are unimportant. The results in these contests cannot change the fact that Obama has pocketed more voter-determined delegates than Clinton, and that fact apparently is pushing several superdelegates each day to declare their loyalty to Obama.

It's not unusual for a primary not to matter. In previous elections, candidates often skipped territory not deemed favorable to them. And late states often have had little impact. This year shows that it's hard to know in advance which states and which period will be crucial. Who'd thought that those medium-sized, in-the-middle-of-the-calendar states would be so important? But that was where and when Obama gathered momentum and vacuumed up a bunch of delegates.

So nothing against West Virginians, but, like voters in late states of previous contests, they don't have much of a say in who will be the Democratic nominee. And neither will Kentuckians, who next week are likely to tilt toward Clinton, while Oregonians near-coronate Obama. The Democratic primary, as red-hot as any recent primary contest, is petering out. Seemingly with a whimper, rather than a bang. Which is a good thing. Clinton at the moment seems to be coasting, not calculating how best to destroy Obama. After the intensity of the past few months, she may need an exit strategy that entails a gradual withdrawal and lets her retreat with a few more battlefield victories. As long as she doesn't use these weeks to scorch Obama, her continued presence in the race won't have any long-term impact.

It's true, as I've noted elsewhere, that her wins in the remaining primary only have consequence if she intends to mount a full-throttle campaign to persuade superdelegates to vote for her against the will of the primary and caucus voters. But her dream of triumphing via the insiders appears to be fading quickly. So West Virginia, Kentucky, and the few other primaries left--it's all for show. The only victories she can earn at this point are hollow ones.

Here's a posting I put up at the Mother Jones blog:

The morning after, the Clinton crew was unbowed. As Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night was being creamed by Barack Obama in North Carolina and eking out a narrow victory in Indiana, pundits throughout Cable News Land were pronouncing her dead, dead, dead. Tim Russert said the race was over. But when a reporter on the campaign's morning conference call, asked Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, if there had been "any discussions about not going forward," he said, "No discussions." And he seemed to mean it.

On the call, Wolfson, deputy communications director Phil Singer, and chief strategist Geoff Garin were forward-looking. They claimed to be "happy" about the 1.8-percent win in Indiana--but without sounding at all jubilant about the squeaker. As for North Carolina--where she lost by 14 points--they claimed "progress" there and pointed to the fact that she beat Obama among white voters by 24 points (as if the increasing racial polarization within the Democratic primary electorate is something to celebrate). They acknowledged that Clinton had in recent weeks loaned her campaign nearly $6.5 million--and claimed it was a sign of her commitment to moving ahead and, of course, fighting for real people. They repeated the campaign's call to seat the disputed delegations of Florida and Michigan, and they indicated they were ready to rumble in the upcoming primaries. Voters in those states, Garin said, should be given the ability "to express their voice." He added, "All we are doing is suggesting the process ought to play out."

In other words, damn the pundits, full speed ahead. It appeared that Clinton--faced with three alternatives: fighting on as if nothing has changed, dropping out, or planning a graceful exit strategy--has for the time being settled on option one.

But the voyage got a lot rockier after Indiana and North Carolina. As the cable news analysts pointed out, it is now practically a mathematical certainty that Obama will end the primaries next month with a lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote, even if the results in Florida and Michigan are included. So Clinton has run out of metrics. The days of fuzzy math are over. There will be no measure by which she will be able to argue she is the voters' choice. All the campaign is left with is an opinion: Clinton can do better than Obama against John McCain in the fall. Clinton and her lieutenants do have stats to cite, notably her performance among working-class voters (meaning, white working-class voters). She has demonstrated, Wolfson maintained on the call, "a proven ability" to win over these voters, while Obama has not. This is, he added, "the crux of the argument" that the Clinton campaign will be making to the superdelegates. And in the next primary states--West Virginia (May 13), Kentucky (May 20), Oregon (May 20)--Clinton will try to show once more that she fares better among lunch-pail Democrats.

So now Clinton, who passionately insists that democracy demands that the Florida and Michigan contest be counted and that voters in the last few states be granted the opportunity to state their preferences, is left with nothing but the most elitist of strategies: she must convince party insiders--the 300 or so not-yet-committed superdelegates--to vote against the popular will of the voters who participated in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. On the conference call, I asked Garin whether his campaign is essentially stuck with a "nullification strategy." He disputed his campaign's game plan was anything like a "nullification strategy." All delegates--pledged delegates and superdelegates--have "equal moral weight in the process," he said, and the rules of the party "anticipate there will be delegates" who will make "good faith decisions."

That is so. But for Clinton to win, these superdelegates will have to say that they know better than the voters. It is certainly permissible under Democratic Party rules. But might such an action blow apart the party? There is no way for the Clinton campaign to orchestrate this strategy politely or calmly and wrap it up quickly after the primaries conclude on June 3. After all, no superdelegate commitment is solid until he or she actually votes at the convention. Even if Clinton is able to sway enough superdelegates and win the necessary number of commitments, Obama will not fold his tent and accept this as a deal done. He would fight for those superdelegates and, if need be, fight the process. There would be a bloody battle from early June until the first ballot at the convention in late August. Nullification cannot be accomplished neatly. Clinton and her crew must realize that.

I asked Garin if he foresaw any problem if the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes was not chosen at the convention. "When we get to June 3, we'll have a very close result," he said. "This might raise the question of how close is close." He didn't answer the question.

Right now, the Clintonites are saying they're not bailing. But in for a penny, in for a pound. The only way she can triumph is by first persuading superdelegates to vote against the wishes of primary voters and caucus-goers and by then mounting an ugly fight that will last for months until the convention--a fight that would likely create consequences that would resonate far beyond the convention.

It may be full speed ahead for Clinton and her gang, but that's only because her finger is on the button and she is considering pushing it.

"We now know who the Democratic nominee will be." That's what Tim Russert said shortly after midnight on Wednesday, even while telection-watchers all over the world were waiting for the final results in Indiana. He was writing off Hillary Clinton. Done. Finished. Kaput. Whether she knew it or not.

A close win or a loss in Indiana, coupled with a resounding defeat in North Carolina, indicates that Clinton, Queen of Pennsylvania, is now the candidate losing altitude. The recent polls all showed her ahead by a decent margin in Indiana and closing in North Carolina. If those polls were on target, then somehow Barack Obama managed a late surge in both states.

But are Russert and the other pundits penning Clinton's obit prematurely? Does she have no choice but to say good-bye? She and her campaign aides immediately went into huddle mode--she canceled her appearances on the morning shows--in order to decide what to do now, as their cable news surrogates continued to talk up her chances in the coming primaries.

Given that it is likely that Clinton and her crew have not yet reached any decisions, a reporter or pundit can only at this point hazard a guess. And I would not count her out so quickly. Not that she has a chance. As the cable news analysts pointed out repeatedly on Tuesday night, Obama was racking up more delegates and more popular votes--further undermining any argument Clinton might be able to make to the superdelegates. But as I've noted before, the lesson the Clintons learned during the impeachment episode was this: no matter how bad it gets, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and ignore those calling for you to quit. The Clintons have defied the pundits before. They may give it another stab.

Will Indiana and North Carolina decide anything? In all likelihood, no. If Barack Obama were to cream Hillary Clinton in both states, there would be more pressure on Clinton to quit. But (a) that electoral prospect does not seem likely, given the direction of the recent polls in each state and (b) Clinton would still not leave the race. She would keep on going, hoping for another Reverend Wright-like development that would cripple Obama.

And if Clinton manages to win each primary--and a victory for her in North Carolina is way against the odds--there's no way Obama, who will maintain a lead in pledged delegates--will bow out. If there's a split--the likeliest of the possibilities--nothing really changes. Obama will argue that the math (and the pledged delegate count) remains on his side; Clinton will argue that Obama did not close the deal with Indianans, so she must press on.

That is, Obama will continue to have the better argument. After all, if Clinton were to apply her campaign's spin on Obama to her own campaign, she would have to concede that she has not closed the deal with a greater number of voters in Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Clinton is also heading toward a profound contradiction. In recent weeks, she has tried to depict Obama as an elitist and position herself as a pro-democracy populist. On the gas tax holiday, she's down with the people, who are hurt by high gasoline prices, while Obama is in league with "elite opinion" and--egads!--economists, who all are, no doubt, driving around in limos and laughing at the plight of working people. (Pass the Grey Poupon!) She and her lieutenants also constantly call for seating the Michigan and Florida delegations so that the votes of the people in those states count. And they insist that it's good for democracy for Clinton to remain in the race, for the voters in the upcoming states with primaries (and Puerto Rico) deserve a chance to participate. She's Hillary of the people and for the people.

But her ultimate strategy is one of utter elitism. She hopes to be able to persuade the non-elected superdelegates to support her and provide her the edge that trumps Obama's lead in delegates determined by the voters. So who's the real populist here? The candidate who wants the nomination to be decided by the voters, or the candidate who prays party insiders will determine the race against the will of the actual voters? Clinton the Populist is all for empowering the voters of Michigan and Florida and those in the upcoming states--all to keep alive her prospects of winning over the party elite. Once the primaries are done, the people won't matter for her.

How will she make that pivot? No doubt, with confidence and vigor, and without acknowledging the pivot. Her campaign is not about adherence to consistent principles. It's about winning. And when the primaries are done--and one day, they will be done--she will have to decide how far she is willing to go to undo the votes of the people.

During a conference call with reporters on Sunday, Clinton officials kept whacking Barack Obama for opposing Clinton's proposed gas tax holiday, insisting this was evidence that Obama just doesn't get it and is out of touch with common Americans. Clinton herself on Sunday compared Obama's opposition to the gas tax suspension to the opposition emanating from "elite opinion"--in what seemed to be an attempt to ignite an intra-party class war: I'm with the people; he's with the elites. And on the conference call, Phil Singer, the deputy communications director for Hillary Clinton's campaign, said that Obama

is not connecting with working class voters, real people and we think that's a problem in this election but its also going to be a problem for him going forward if he is the nominee.

Wait-a-minute. Was Singer suggesting that those voters who have voted for Obama--Democrats, independents, and Republicans--are not "real people?" Was he putting down the 15 million or so voters who have cast their ballot for Obama?

Clinton has been credibly accused of once having said "screw 'em," in reference to working-class white voters. But now that her campaign in recent primaries has fared well among this bloc of voters, she is going all-out to woo 'em and to elevate them to the most important group of voters in the entire universe. At the same time, Hillary and her lieutenants are arguing that Obama is too elite (or effete?) to bond with these voters.

There's no doubt that blue-collar voters are important to the electoral prospects of Democrats. Ronald Reagan reigned because he was able to swipe these folks from the Democratic coalition. And Richard Nixon had his successful "Southern strategy," which depended on playing to the racial fears of white working-class voters. But this does not mean that the other parts of the coalition are not "real." Singer and the Clintonites are pushing GOP talking points (about "San Francisco Democrats" and the rest) when they suggest that only the blue-collar Dems are "real" people.

There are millions of Democrats--including many middle-class voters--who have supported Obama. And just as the Dems may not be able to win in November without blue-collar voters on their side, the same can be said about African-American voters. What if pissed-off black voters stay home in Cleveland and Philadelphia? Could a Democratic nominee win Ohio and Pennsylvania? Of course not. They're no less "real" than the Deerhunter voters of Pennsylvania.

Millions of Americans--millions of Democrats--see Obama as a leader and an inspiration. Clinton and her crew ought to be careful in dismissing them as not the real thing. If she somehow manages to win the nomination--which can only happen if she destroys Obama and then persuades superdelegates to overturn the primary and caucus results--she will need these not-so-real voters in the general election.

Elsewhere I recently wondered whether Barack Obama is slipping. And I observed that though recent poll numbers suggest bad news for him, it's hard to suss out the connection between the campaign narrative in the national news media (Reverend Wright! "Bitter" voters!) and how voters in Indiana and North Carolina decide for whom to vote.

No doubt realizing that a viewer of cable news shows might believe that Obama has lost altitude, the Obama campaign on Friday morning sent an email to political reporters (who tend to watch cable news shows) displaying various pages in Indiana that morning. Each newspaper presented stories that come across as favorable to Obama. Here they are:

Now there are few Indianans who read each of the four newspapers. But the overall impression one would get from these reports is that Obama ain't doing too bad. It's certainly a different take on the campaign than that presented within the national political media. And far more Indianans look at these front pages than watch Hardball.

But what about those tough polling numbers for Obama in Indiana? I suppose the best that can be said is that, one way or another, they won't matter after the votes are counted on Tuesday.

AN OSCAR FOR MOTHER JONES. Well not an Oscar, but an Ellie--which is the equivalent of an Oscar in the magazine business. On Thursday night, Mother Jones, my home base, won a National Magazine Award for general excellence. That's like picking up the Best Picture prize. My congratulations to editors-in-chief Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, publisher Jay Harris, and all the staffers who put in long hours to produce the magazine. Please remember to check out our daily website.

Quick--name an official task that was Hillary Clinton's responsibility last time she was in the White House? The answer is obvious: health care. It was a top priority for the Bill Clinton administration in the first years of his presidency. And he handed the mission to his two-for-the-price-of-one First Lady.

What happened next? We all know: an unmitigated disaster that set the cause of health care reform back for years. Hillary Clinton and her top advisers--in proceedings marked by secrecy and we-know-best arrogance--cooked up a plan that no one could understand. They bent over backward to accommodate the corporate community and miscalculated: Big Business ended up opposing the plan. And the common folks who the plan was supposed to help couldn't comprehend it--which meant they (and their elected representatives) could not fight effectively for it.

Flash forward to 2008. Clinton is fighting for her political life in a fierce battle with Barack Obama. She's pandering on gas prices, she's suggesting that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief, she's pouncing on a remark he made to suggest he's an elitist, she's making a big deal out of his past relationship with a onetime 70s radical, she's accusing him of not being committed to withdrawing from Iraq, she's pushing reporters to dwell upon Obama's friendship with a developer indicted on corruption charges, she's pondering how to game the delegate system. And her latest ad in North Carolina, which holds an important primary on Tuesday, she repeats her claim that she is the candidate who can make change happen.

In the ad, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, a Clinton supporter, says:

These are tough times in America and I think that Hillary is the one we can count on to get the job done. She's going to turn the economy around, she's going bring new jobs, she's going to get some tax cuts for the middle class for a change. She's going to make health care available to everybody in this country, and she's going to do everything she can to help every child reach their full potential. She is so resilient, so determined. She knows how to deliver.

To which anyone with a skeptical view (and a memory) might say, "Hillarycare." Sure, she's racked up a few accomplishments as a senator. But she failed miserably on the biggest task she has ever assumed. She didn't get that job done; she botched it. True, it was a tough assignment, and the odds were against her. But if she's making promises now, her first attempt to "make health care available to everybody in this country" is relevant. (More relevant than the issue of her laugh.) Well, maybe she can get the job done on the second time around. Older and wiser, and all that. But her early-90s failure was one reason why health care disappeared as a political issue for so long. That's a reality that present-day campaign rhetoric can be measured against.

It's back to pander-politics. And unfortunately for Barack Obama, such tactics often pay off for pols.

There is little doubt that a federal gas tax holiday is bad policy. John McCain first proposed suspending the 18-cents-per-gallon tax for the summer months, and then Hillary Clinton jumped in, adding that oil companies should be slapped with a windfall profits tax to make up for the $9 billion in highway construction and maintenance funds that would be loss if the federal gas tax was waived for three months. Such a temporary measure would do nothing to address the fundamental energy problems of the nation. And Obama points out it will save the average American a mere $28 and, worse, it could cause prices to go up by encouraging more driving in a peak travel period and boosting the demand for gasoline. He's certainly right. It's no more than a Band-Aid--and, even then, not such a good stopgap measure.

But taking this egghead position has placed him in the middle, with Clinton and McCain shooting at him from different sides. Both are exploiting the moment to pound Obama further for being supposedly out of touch with common folks (i.e., voters). Clinton has been running television ads in Indiana slamming Obama for not supporting the gas tax proposal. The Republican National Committee has zapped out press releases blasting Obama for referring to McCain's gas tax plan as a "gimmick" and a "scheme."

So we're back to the perennial question: how mature are voters? Do they fall for the no-pain, quick-fix? Can they see through transparent pandering? The "First Read" gang at MSNBC had some interesting thoughts on this front:

Clinton is trying to harken back to the '90s and hammer home the "I feel your pain" aspect of the Clinton years that voters responded to so well back then. But the debate over the gas-tax holiday is an interesting one -- and it's a test of just how closely voters are following the campaign. Will voters respond simply on the pocketbook front and demand this gas tax holiday, despite all the downsides that many experts have outlined about the idea? It's the old "if it feels good, do it" (that Clinton and McCain have seen succeed for so long during times that pocketbook politics have dominated the debate) versus the intellectual argument Obama is trying to have (that usually is praised by, well, intellectuals but dismissed by rank-and-file voters who want their tax cut or gas prices cut). Clinton is trying to own this issue big time -- even running TV ads about it and constantly criticizing Obama for not supporting the gas-tax holiday. Obama's criticism of McCain's plan and Clinton's are accurate. The only problem is it leaves voters saying, "Ok, it's a gimmick; so what's your proposal? This feels like Clinton v. Tsongas '92. But the electorate acts as if its more informed than it was 16 years ago, and also could be a bit more distrustful of government handouts than in the past. Regardless, one could argue that the Clinton-Obama debate over this issue sums up their candidacies and potential presidencies. In this environment, which do voters prefer?

So as Obama has been tied up by the Wright business (and doing his best to respond to the recent Wright eruption), Clinton has been hoping to trump him in the I'm-more-like-you category. That is, like you, I'm damn pissed off by these freckin' high gas prices--can you believe what it costs to fill up?!!!--and I've got something to do about it right now. Her unsaid message: While Obama is dealing with all that black stuff, I'm fighting for you and am willing to kick the oil company in the teeth to save you a couple of bucks a week.

Will it work? Indianans and North Carolinians will tell us on Tuesday.

This past weekend, at a pre-party before the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, I spotted Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. As always--at least as always in public--he was in an upbeat mood and greeted me heartily. So, I asked, when does this end?

"June 15," he said without a nanosecond of hesitation.

Why then? I asked. The primaries finish on June 3, he noted, and after that there will be pressure on the uncommitted superdelegates (who now number about 300) to commit to one candidate or another. It should not take too long for these undecided insiders to make up their minds and declare their intentions--even if there are some who would rather not choose between the two.

So all done by June 15? You won't contend the nomination contest beyond then? I asked.

"Oh, I'm confident we'll be the nominee," he said, smiling.

But, I added, on the night of the Pennsylvania election, you said, "We're going all the way to Denver." That suggested, I noted, that Clinton would not yield any time before then. Remarks like that, I continued, raise the prospect of a Clinton backroom operation aimed at winning over both superdelegates and pledged delegates in the weeks and months after the primaries.

"What do you expect me to say?" McAuliffe retorted. "I'm chairman of the campaign." Well, I suggested, you could have said, "We're going on to the next primaries and we're going to keep on winning." He didn't have to use the D-word. He shrugged.

So, I asked, I have a promise? June 15? "June 15," he said. You keep it alive beyond that, I noted, and it could be a nuclear war within the party. (In fact, even if McAuliffe and Clinton succeed by winning enough superdelegates in the 12 days after the primaries to trump Barack Obama's lead in pledged delegates, there still could be an intra-party apocalypse.) He didn't take the bait. "June 15," he repeated.

"Talk to you on the 16th," I said.

Can't the superdelegates stop this?

Can't the Democratic candidates stop the ugliness?

Can't the media stop enabling this catfight?

In a word, no. Writing in The Huffington Post, Thomas Edsall, noted that it is the media that are keeping Hillary alive:

In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks.

The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York Times.

For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown.

I don't argue with Edsall's view that many in the commentariat have tilted toward Clinton--or, at least, against Obama. (He cites the recent work of John Judis and Joe Klein.) But besides the media, the superdelegates, and the candidates, there is someone else to blame for the messy Democratic race: those darn Democratic voters. The Clinton people keep saying, "Obama can't seal the deal" with Democratic voters. Clinton, of course, has sealed no such deal, either, since she trails in pledged delegates and popular votes. (And don't get me started about her argument that if you include Florida and Michigan she's received more votes than Obama. There was no campaigning in Florida, and Obama's name did not appear on the Michigan ballot. This sort of spin is infuriating.)

It's the Democratic voters who can't seal anything. As a group, they remain evenly split between Obama and Clinton. And a majority of them in Pennsylvania did not buy the case that Clinton is actually out of the running and that this increasingly bitter race must be brought to a swift close. What are you gonna do about voters like these? If they keep voting for Clinton, she will continue to claim the results as justification for staying in the race--even if the math is nearly impossible. And if Democratic voters in North Carolina and Indiana disappoint her on May 6, she probably will remain in the race, hoping that Democratic voters in West Virginia (May 13), Kentucky (May 20), and Puerto Rico (June 1) will provide her some protection (even if thin) against what could well be a rising cry from Democratic insiders for her to bail.

It sounds quaint, but at this moment it's the Democratic voters who are determining the shape of the race. Has Clinton been too rough in her attacks on Obama? If so, the Pennsylvania voters did not punish her. They rewarded her and cheered her on to the next contests.

At this point, many Democrats seemed resigned to six more weeks of nastiness. And most of the nearly 300 uncommitted superdelegates do not appear to be in a rush to declare a preference for either Obama or Clinton. The crunch point will come at the end of the primaries. Obama will likely be ahead in pledged delegates. And Clinton will then have to decide whether to continue a bloody campaign until the convention or admit defeat. My guess is she'll press on--almost no matter what. But what those pesky Democratic voters do between now and then will either bolster her case or weaken it. They have a big say in whether in the party goes through a wrenching (and possibly disastrous) post-primaries battle. How's that for democracy?

The Democratic primary contest has been "relatively mild." So said Hillary Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday morning. But in the same call, he and Phil Singer, another campaign aide, continued to whack Obama for making remarks that they blasted "as elitist and condescending." Singer added that Obama is "somewhat detached" from American voters. And Wolfson noted that the whole fuss over Obama's "bitter" comments is "an important issue." But it's a fuss fueled by the Clinton campaign, which yesterday put up an ad in which supposed Clinton supporters--average Joes and Josephines in Pennsylvania--gripe about Obama's remarks.

"It just shows how out of touch Barack Obama is," says Man 1 in the ad. (That's how the campaign identified the fellow in an email to reporters.) "I was insulted by Barack Obama," says Woman 1. And in the spot--the first negative ad in the Obama-Clinton contest that attacks an opponent by name--Woman 2 says, "I'm not clinging to my faith out of frustration and bitterness. I find my faith is very uplifting." [Correction: Howard Wolfson emails to say, "This is not the first ad that mentions an opponent by name -- we ran ads in WI urging him to debate -- he responded by saying we would say anything or do anything to win."]

Gal No. 2 gets to the heart of this non-issue. At that now-infamous San Francisco fundraiser, Obama, referring to middle-class voters in areas hit by massive job loss, said,

So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Obama's foes--in the Clinton camp and the John McCain camp--have accused him of saying people "cling" to guns and faith only because they are bitter. That's not exactly what Obama said. He noted that people in hard-pressed areas become bitter because they see the system failing them and they cling to their belief in gun rights and/or God (as well as other beliefs, such as opposition to immigrants or gay rights). Obama obviously knows that these beliefs--the good and the bad--were already deeply held before the mill jobs disappeared. Such beliefs, though, are presumably further embraced in difficult times. And given that some of these beliefs (gun rights, opposition to abortion and gay rights) tend to cut against candidates perceived as liberals, it can make things tougher for certain Democrats. This ain't in much dispute.

No doubt, Obama was trying to express what passes for a sophisticated point in our culture of debate-by-soundbites, yet he did so in a clunky manner that offered his opponents the chance to assert that he believes that faith and a love of guns come only out of frustration. There may be an argument for such a proposition. But I doubt Obama would accept it. As a former community organizer and longtime churchgoer (we all know that he goes to church), he hardly fits the bill as a secularist elitist. Yet the Clinton campaign pounced on these words to claim that the man whom they have already decried as not able to protect America as commander in chief is out of touch with real Americans. What a "mild" attack.

The bitter "bitter" debate is ridiculous. Days after the report came out that Barack Obama had said that blue-collar Pennsylvanians living in small towns that have experienced massive job flight are "bitter," the controversy is still the talk of the cable news shows. This is nuts. But it's nuts via design. As soon as Obama's remarks were reported, Hillary Clinton pounced, stating:

I saw in the media it's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive, who are rolling up their sleeves. They are working hard everyday for a better future, for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them, they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.

And Clinton surrogate Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor, teed off on Obama's observation that these Pennsylvanians who "fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration" now "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Vilsack declared:

[Obama] suggests that in some way the faith of those who live in small towns is superficial. It's used as a crutch in a time of need. That's not what I know. What I know is that our faith is real and it is rooted. It is the foundation of our values system. It is what defines how we live our lives, and most importantly of all, how we raise our families. It is true. It is genuine. His comment about guns suggests that they are an instrument that we use somehow to protect ourselves from the outside world, to isolate ourselves from the outside world. When in fact, guns are a reflection of what we do with our family and our friends. It's how we pass on, through hunting, family traditions that are strong and how we form friendships that are lifelong.

Obama was simply stating what has been established dogma within the Democratic Party: when blue-collar voters' economic concerns and troubles are not addressed, they get pissed off and they vote on other issues, such as what's known in politics as the three Gs: Gods, guns, and gays. And nowadays, you can toss in illegal immigration and trade. With the exception of trade, all of this has helped the Republicans. Clinton and her people understand that.

To say one is "bitter" is no insult--especially when you affirm the reason for the anger (in this case, a government that has not responded to economic needs) and vow to make change. Clinton's equating Obama's recognition of justifiable bitterness with elitism is illogical. It's not elitism, it's empathy. Feeling their pain. Remember that? But she and her people saw an opportunity, and they went straight for the jugular. (You want an elitist remark? What about the gal who once said, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.") And Obama, despite Vilsack's braying, was not dismissing the basics of faith and gun ownership (what a combo!). He was merely referring to the passions and circumstances that drive working-class voters to place gun issues and social controversies (such as abortion) at the top of their list on Election Day. Vilsack knows that.

This campaign is becoming more churlish and childish by the hour. Each day the two campaigns shoot out to reporters emails that try to turn small matters into scandals. The Clinton people, in my view, are worse, but the Obama camp has not been able to stay above the fray. The pressures of the campaign do push political aides and strategists to resort to such measures. And for political reporters, any fight makes a good headline. So this dynamic ain't gonna change. The Democratic contest is just going to get more bitter--bitter through Wednesday's debate and perhaps bitter all the way to the convention.

Now it's back to the usual fun and games.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama tried to look statesmanlike (or stateswoman-like) as each respectfully questioned General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. Neither senator provided much in the way of push-back to Petraeus' and Crocker's statements. Yes, they stuck to their overall criticisms of the war and their respective calls for withdrawing U.S. troops, but each had obviously calculated that the Petraeus hearings were not an occasion to raise a fuss or score points.

But today it was time to do so. At least for Clinton. At a campaign event, she said:

We need to be planning and preparing to start bringing our troops home, and I have committed to doing that within 60 days of my becoming president. Senator Obama, on the other hand, says he'll end the war, but his top foreign policy adviser said he won't necessarily follow the plan he's been talking about during this campaign. That the plan is "just words." Well, you can count on me to end the war safely and responsibly.

Once again, she was trying to depict Obama as a phony, indirectly citing remarks from ex-Obama adviser Samantha Power, who weeks ago had said that if Obama were to become president, his withdrawal plan would be reality-checked against the conditions of the time. That's logical. But the Clinton folks claimed Power had spilled a big secret: Obama didn't intend to stick by his vow to withdraw troops from Iraq. And they tried to make this a big to-do.

At the time, it didn't quite catch on as a campaign meme. (Reverend Wright came along.) But in this campaign, it seems, no allegation ever truly disappears. Clinton is trying to resurrect this charge.

The Obama campaign immediately fired back and released this statement:

Hillary Clinton's tired and discredited attack is just the same old politics that won't end this war that she voted to authorize, and won't change the fact that she has repeatedly misled the American people about her Iraq record. We're happy to have a debate with Hillary Clinton over who the American people trust to end this war, since Barack Obama is the only candidate who had the judgment to oppose the war from the very beginning, not just from the beginning of a campaign for President.

The Obama-Clinton bickering is getting old and annoying. In this round--as in many--her campaign is the more guilty party. But that aside, it's unfortunate for Democrats and war critics that these two candidates talk tougher about each other than they do about the front men for George W. Bush's war.

Mark Penn's departure from the Hillary Clinton campaign took a punch away from Barack Obama.

It's a punch that Obama had not yet used. But as the primary campaign has intensified, I've been waiting for the moment--at a debate or during a high-profile campaign speech--when Obama would turn to Clinton (literally or metaphorically) and say something like:

With all due respect, Senator, how can you say that you are a candidate who will fight the for change against the status quo of Washington and champion the interests of working Americans, when your chief strategist is an inside-the-Beltway consultant who makes millions of dollars a year helping union-busting firms, corporate polluters, various industries, foreign governments and special interests get what they want out of Washington at the expense of hard-working Americans? How can you place your campaign in the hands of a fellow who's day job is to assist corporate powers so they win special favors and special treatment? Do you not see the contradiction between your words and this action? Should voters not wonder about your close and important association with this Washington insider who rents out his influence--for millions of dollars--to corporate special interests?

Well, that's not going to happen now. The Clinton campaign tied Penn's exit--ouster?--to the recent news that he was working for the Government of Colombia, advising it on how to win support in Washington for a free-trade treaty that Clinton says she opposes. (Was this arrogant? Foolish? Dumb?) But top-level Clinton aides have been grumbling about Penn for months, with some rooting for his fall. So the Colombian connection was convenient ammo for those on the campaign who have blamed Penn's go-for-a-general-election-message strategy for HRC's troubles during the primary season. There are some happy campers in Hillaryland today--and Obama has lost an opportunity.

COUNTDOWN TO PETRAEUS: On Tuesday, General David Petraeus will again try to take Capitol Hill. I've already done a set-up (here and here). But I was thinking about last year's Petraeus show and remembered that he had a pretty easy time snowing Congress. Read this posting (of mine) from September:

Citing General David Petraeus, George W. Bush, in his so-called "wayforward in Iraq" speech declared on Thursday night, "The Iraqi army is becoming more capable."

For days, I've been carrying around with me page 13 of the 14-page slideshow Petraeus showed during his multiple appearances on Capitol Hill. (That's how nerdy I am!) And to anyone unfortunate to get stuck in an elevator with me, I've flashed this chart to show that according to Petraeus' own numbers, there has been no progress in the past year in fielding Iraqi security forces that can function on their own. Yes, I said no progress.

The chart--titled "Iraqi Security Forces Capabilities"--divides Iraqi troops into four groups: units that are fully independent (Level I); that can stage operations with support of U.S. forces (Level II); that can fight side by side with U.S. forces (Level III); that are still forming (Level IV). If you look at September 2006, you will see that there were 11,000 Level I troops and 86,000 Level II troops. Fast forward to September 2007, and the numbers are, Level I, 12,000 and Level II, 84,000. That's a slight drop in capabilities, if you combine Levels I and II.

So how can Bush--or anyone else--say that Iraqi troops are becoming more capable? For all the money and effort spent during the last year--when the Bush administration was claiming that the training of Iraqi troops was a top priority (remember, they stand up, we leave?)--there's been little, if any, return on the investment. By the way, the chart includes the national police--a force so rife with corruption and sectarianism that the Jones Commission recently recommended it be disbanded. Petraeus's chart is further evidence that the administration gameplan isn't working.

Back in September, reporters and legislators did not pay attention to this important portion of Petraeus' presentation. Will the scrutiny be tighter this time?

It's the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. What to say? A friend emailed me a link to what is one of the most poignant commentaries on his murder: Bobby Kennedy's remarks that night to a crowd that had come to hear him deliver a campaign speech but instead had to be informed by the Democratic presidential candidate that King had been shot and killed in Memphis.

Listening to this speech--in the middle of another hotly contested Democratic presidential campaign--it's difficult not to ask, who today sounds more like the RFK of that moment: HRC or BHO? It's not close.

I have to admit it: I'm not smart enough to follow Hillary Clinton's line of reasoning. In an interview on Saturday, she declared she was in the race until the convention. And in making this vow, she cited Florida and Michigan:

"We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York. "I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."

Clinton and her spinners keep saying that Florida and Michigan could be lost to the Democrats in November if the Democratic National Committee does not accept the delegates elected in those states (in early primaries not approved by the national party) or if there is no do-over in those states (as now appears unlikely). But do they have any basis for saying this? Presumably, the Republicans and independents in Florida and Michigan won't give a damn that the Democrats (with help from Republicans in the legislatures) screwed up the primary elections in these two states. The Rs and Is who can be won over by either Barack Obama or Clinton (whoever is the nominee) are not likely to be swayed against the Democrat because Democratic delegates from their states were not recognized by the national party. What sort of ads can change that? ("Republicans, the Democratic Party doesn't care about Democratic voters in your state.")

As for the Democrats, HRC appears to be suggesting that if she is the nominee she will not be able to excite the Ds in Michigan and Florida--where she did well in the unapproved primaries. (Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan; and neither he nor Clinton campaigned in Florida.) Does she truly believe that Democrats eager to punish George W. Bush's Republican Party will vengefully vote for John McCain or stay home because of a procedural matter? Will they really respond to a GOP ad that says, "The Democratic Party did not want to count your vote, so you should vote for the Republicans"? Would that play with Democrats in, of all places, Florida, where GOPers shut down the 2000 recount? And if Clinton was not the nominee but campaigning hard for Obama, could she and Obama not rally the Democratic faithful in Michigan and Florida in the general election?

It seems that Clinton's argument is predicated on the assumption that Democratic voters are peevish, resentful grudge-holders willing to cut off their noses to spite the national party--and hand the White House back to the Republicans. Are they really sooooo sensitive and beyond the reach of the persuasive powers of Obama and/or Clinton? If Clinton believes she cannot win over the Democrats in Michigan and Florida in November, maybe she shouldn't be in the race.

Believe me, it does get tiring to write repeatedly about the anti-Obama excesses of the Clinton campaign; I wish her aides would spend as much time pushing her proposals for Afghanistan and the housing crisis. But every day there's more negative material. So here's a piece I just posted at MotherJones.com.

The Clinton campaign keeps insisting that Hillary Clinton is the victim of a sleazy Obama campaign--though it engages in nasty tactics to denigrate Barack Obama. The Clintonites, it now seems, will even make common cause with the rightwing Hilary-haters to do so.

As Marc Ambinder reports, the Clinton campaign has distributed an American Spectator article that claims that retired General Merrill McPeak, an Obama foreign policy adviser, is an anti-Semite and a drunk. An anti-Semite? Supposedly because he has noted that the Israel lobby in America influences Mideast policy and because he advocates Israel withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders. Of course, that definition of anti-Semitism is absurd. But for the Clinton campaign to turn to the American Spectator, a rightwing publication that led the Clinton witch-hunts of the 1990s (and which published stories by David Brock and others regarding Bill Clinton's personal life), shows a certain desperation--or a damn-history opportunism. The article argues that Obama is bad for the Jews. The Clintonites are disseminating it. That would be ugly enough. The source renders the episode damn ugly.

Meanwhile, Clinton herself cozied up to the Richard Mellon Scaife--the man who funded the "vast rightwing conspiracy" (which included the American Spectator) that tried to destroy the Clintons in the 1990s--in order to take a swipe at Obama. On Tuesday, Clinton met with editors and reporters of the archly conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which Scaife owns. At that session, she did what she could to keep the Jeremiah Wright controversy alive by saying, "He would not have been my pastor. You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend." In attendance was Scaife. ("Hell has officially frozen over," rightwing journalist Byron York commented.) So has Clinton no shame? No pride? Or merely a sharp sense of political calculation? Did she ponder the irony of using Scaife's platform (in the key state of Pennsylvania) to discredit a fellow Democrat?

All's fair in love, war, and hotly contested primaries? Maybe. But that doesn't make it right. Clinton might be willing to put aside her grudge against the American Spectator and Scaife because doing so helps her politically. But in the 1990s this band of Clinton-haters were out to ruin not merely her and her hubby but the entire progressive agenda. (They always believed the Clintons to be far more left than Bill and Hillary actually were.) But now, for Hillary Clinton, they're good enough to use against Obama.

On Monday, during a conference call with reporters, Phil Singer, a senior Clinton aide, expressed tremendous outrage that an Obama supporter in Iowa had blogged that a Bill Clinton remark (which may have been a poke at Obama's patriotism) was "a stain on [Bill Clinton's] legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress." Singer went on about how this was proof the Obama camp was running a tawdry campaign reviving the rightwing Clinton hatred of the past. That was hyperbole, of course. But it was hypocritical hyperbole. If Clintonites can use an over-the-top American Spectator article to try to whip up trouble between Obama and Jewish voters and if she can sit politely next to Scaife because doing so affords her a good media opportunity for slamming Obama, her campaign has no basis for comparing criticism from the Obama camp to the misdeeds of Kenneth Starr and the Clinton pursuers of the 1990s. By legitimizing the "vast rightwing conspiracy" so she can put down Obama, Hillary Clinton may be confirming one of the Klinton Krazies perennial talking points about her and her husband: they will do anyting--anything!--to win.

The communications strategy of the Hillary Clinton campaign reminds me of the old gag about the kid who killed his parents and then begged the court for mercy because he was an orphan.

Howard Wolfson, please don't now say I'm comparing you and other Clinton aides to murderers.

On Monday's conference call, Wolfson and Phil Singer were in a huff. Though Clinton that day was giving a major address outlining her proposals for dealing with the housing credit crisis, her two top spinners were not hailing her initiatives. Instead, they were beating on the Obama camp for mounting what they claimed was a mega-negative campaign against their gal.

What had their tail feathers all ruffled this morning? Well, an Obama national security adviser, retired General Tony McPeak, had compared Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy after Clinton had made a remark that some Obama-ites believed slighted Obama's patriotism and then Gordon Fischer, a leading Obama supporter in Iowa, wrote on his own blog that this Clinton comment was "a stain on his legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress."

Fischer quickly apologized for the remark. But that didn't stop Wolfson and Singer from pointing to this one sentence as proof, yes proof, that the Obama crew was running a super-sleazy crusade against Clinton. By the way, in the same call, they noted that Obama has so far "failed" the commander in chief test. What's their basis for such a claim? He did not win a majority of the votes in Ohio and Texas. By that standard, Clinton has "failed' the commander in chief test in more states than Obama and with more Democratic voters than he has. But I digress.

The point is this: The Clintonites denigrate Obama on one of the most critical fronts of this campaign, with Clinton herself having gone so far as to suggest that John McCain would be a better C-in-C than Obama, but then they build up these tempests-in-a-blog to play the victim. On the conference call, Singer acted so outraged over Fischer's one sentence, saying it was too awful a "personal" remark to repeat. Reality check: Bill Clinton did stain that dress; he did have an affair with a subordinate in the White House; he did put at risk his presidency and the work of thousands of people who supported him, and he did lie about it. The stain is there. Even if the impeachment crusade of the self-righteous GOPers was misguided and excessive, that does not mean Bill Clinton should get a pass on all that.

As for McPeak's comment...so what? He thought Clinton was questioning Obama's patriotism. He fired back hard. It's not a big deal--especially when James Carville, a top Clinton supporter, has called Bill Richardson "Judas" for having endorsed Obama instead of HIllary Clinton. In human history, Judas outranks McCarthy in villainy.

As I write, there's another Clinton conference call scheduled in 30 minutes. I shudder to think what new offense against humanity the Clintonites will ascribe to the Obama campaign. For a gang that's willing to blast Obama with practically anything at any time, the Clintonites are far too sensitive about the incoming. Rather than hype controversies that barely exist, they ought to stick to promoting Clinton's proposed remedies for the economy--that is, provide more light and less smoke.

Updated with video below.

I'm not naive about how politicians use dramatic license to make a point. Earlier today, I noted that Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, went too far in slamming Hillary Clinton by claiming she supports "George Bush's policy of non-engagement." Though she helped to enable Bush's war in Iraq, this just ain't so.

But Plouffe's truth-stretching is nothing compared to the whopper that Hillary Clinton has been telling about a trip she took to Bosnia in 1996. Days ago, she described the visit this way:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

The "Factchecker" column of The Washington Post examined this claim on Friday--and showed it to be an outright falsehood. As in completely made up. As in a lie?

The problem is, the trip was covered by dozens of reporters, including the Post's John Pomfret, and none of them saw anything like Clinton reported:

A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the First Lady. "As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," said Pomfret....

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss....

You can see CBS News footage of the arrival ceremony here. The footage shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

Others who were present--former Major General Bill Nash, comedian Sinbad--also recall that danger was not near during this event. And in her autobiography, Clinton did not mention such drama at Tuzla. The "Factchecker" awarded her four Pinocchio's for her claim. That's the most a politician can earn.

So why did Hillary Clinton make up such a tale? This is not an instance when a politician did not tell the truth in order to prevent disclosure of negative information. Such un-truthtelling--though not forgivable--are understandable. But to cook up a dramatic but easy-to-check story? There were scores of witnesses to the event. Did she think she could get away with her fiction?

This is different from saying (as Clinton has) that you were actually voting for diplomacy when you voted for the Iraq war resolution. That's spin. And what Plouffe said about Clinton in his fundraising letter was typical campaign BS. Clinton's Balkans tale, though, may be worse and even more troubling than such conventional political prevarication. Is she cracking under the pressure? Does she really believe what she said? Her supporters better hope not.

And here's the video:

I don't like it when people on television say things that are not accurate.

On Tuesday night, I appeared on PBS's Newshour, as part of a panel, to discuss Barack Obama's speech on race. I salute Newshour for playing extended excerpts of the speech and then hosting a long discussion of this address. It was refreshing to have the chance to dig deep into a substantial matter and not merely have to toss off competing soundbites.

Another member of the panel was Earl Hutchinson, a political analyst and an author of a book on race and politics. He was far less impressed with the speech than I was, dismissing it by saying, "Well, we have heard those speeches before. You know, politicians in the past, when forced to, have addressed race. However, they've done it in a very abbreviated and truncated way. As we well know, Bill Clinton, midway through his second term, he actually took a stab at it with a commission. And actually he made several speeches when he did candidly talk about race."

Hutchinson is entitled to an opinion--though he does Obama a disservice by comparing his speech (in which Obama dared to criticize his own community and dared to recognize the reasons for white racial resentments) to those of others, including Bill Clinton. Clinton did develop an initiative on race, but then it petered out. While president, he promised to write a book on race--and never got around to it. And as a candidate in 1992, he dealt with the issue primarily with his Sister Souljah moment--decrying a rap singer who had made controversial statements in what seemed a calculated effort to show white voters he could be independent of the Democratic Party's most loyal base.

If Hutchinson doesn't want to recognize these critical differences, so be it. But what was worse was that he then picked up the old talking points of Obama's political foes. From the transcript:

EARL HUTCHINSON: For the first time, you really heard him put his finger on three or four areas which have been of great concern. He talked about disparities in the criminal justice system. He talked about disparities in the education system, which I presume to mean failing inner-city public schools. And he also talked about disparities in the health care system. So all of these areas, people have asked over and over, "You know, Barack, you make great rhetorical speeches. You're very eloquent. They're very poetic. They're even moving and inspiring, like today. But we really want to know a little bit more to really understand who you are and where you're coming from and what we could expect if you get the nomination and perhaps even win the election." Namely, put some body. Let's see some initiatives. What can we expect, in terms of public policy changes? What are you going to put your political muscle in and behind if you're in the White House? These are things that people are asking, not only about race -- although that's there -- but also in other areas. But especially we hear that a lot from, under the table, not overtly, but from a number of those who are sympathetic toward Barack Obama. "We want to hear more. We want to know more. We want to know specifics."

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying he didn't do enough of that today?

EARL HUTCHINSON: No, I think what happens with Barack's speeches, you know -- and this has been pointed out many times before, not just by opponents, but also supporters....We need to have more details, more specifics in which to gauge and judge you, not only as a candidate, not only as a possible or the possible nominee, but also as a possible president.

It was as if Hutchinson was a spinner for the Clinton campaign, accusing Obama of being mostly talk, and ignoring details. This was so last summer. Did Hutchinson somehow miss the whole debate over the candidates' competing health care plans? That was details ad nauseam. And a quick trip to Obama's campaign site would yield Hutchinson a flood of policy proposals and specifics. Drug sentencing? Obama's site notes that he "believes the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated." He couldn't be much clearer than that. There are proposals for various education reforms. And like Clinton, Obama issued a platform of proposed economic initiatives. There's a heap of stuff for an analyst like Hutchinson to analyze. (Mother Jones did a piece comparing the top ten economic policies of Obama and Hillary Clinton.)

Obama's campaign has produced as much policy nitty-gritty as any. (Dems usually go overboard on this front.) What would cause Hutchinson to suggest Obama has not done so? I don't know. Perhaps he needs to spend more time at the keyboard.

It was not surprising to me that the first cable-news analysis of Barack Obama's speech on race--delivered on Tuesday morning in Philadelphia--focused almost entirely on what he had to say about Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. A good chunk of the speech was indeed devoted to Wright--but in a bigger context than gotcha journalism. Obama's speech was daring and unique. No modern-day presidential candidate has ever given such a speech and taken race so head-on--and, perhaps, dead-on. But it's not surprising that the larger accomplishment of the speech will be lost in the nitty-gritty of controversy-driven journalism.

Jay Rosen, press critic, immediately took CNN to task for this:

I was watching CNN for Obama's speech. Moments after it concluded Wolf Blitzer was asked to tell us what he heard in it. Wolf's ear is the big ear for the Best Political Team on Television, according to CNN. So he went first. And according to Blitzer, Obama's speech boils down to a “pre-emptive strike” against various attacks that are still to come, in the form of videos, ads, and news controversies that are sure to keep Reverend Jeremiah Wright and “race” in play as issues in the campaign. (I don't have his exact words; if someone has does, ping me.)

Wasn't the speech about that very pattern?

This is a style of analysis and a level of thought we have become utterly used to, especially from Blitzer but many others on TV: everything is a move in the game of getting elected, and it's our job in political television to explain to you, the slightly clueless viewer at home, what today's tactics are, then to estimate whether they will work.

That Blitzer, offered the first word on that speech, did the horse race thing tells you about his priorities (mistakenly “static,” as Obama said about Wright) and his imaginative range as an interpreter of politics (pretty close to zero.)

In fact it was a speech aimed right at him, at the best political team on television, and all the makers of our election year spectacle.

Obama had moments earlier told Blitzer. “You've scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.” And so he had- him as much as anyone on television.

Obama had just said to Blitzer, look: “If all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way…” And so if the reactions you report on are reactions to your reporting and video looping how are you, the talent in political television, not an actor with me in this cycle?

I'm not sure that Blitzer deserves such harsh singling-out. But Obama's speech certainly deserves deeper treatment than cable news shows are accustomed to granting such events. Fortunately (for you, dear reader), I've done just that at MotherJones.com:

With racial sentiments swirling in the 2008 campaign--notably, Geraldine Ferraro's claim that Barack Obama is not much more than an affirmative action case and the controversy over his former pastor's over-the-top remarks-- Senator Obama on Tuesday morning responded to these recent fusses with a speech unlike any delivered by a major political figure in modern American history. While explaining--not excusing--Reverend Jeremiah Wright's remarks (which Obama had already criticized), he called on all Americans to recognize that even though the United States has experienced progress on the racial reconciliation front in recent decades (Exhibit A: Barack Obama), racial anger exists among both whites and blacks, and he said that this anger and its causes must be fully acknowledged before further progress can be achieved. Obama did this without displaying a trace of anger himself.

Speaking in Philadelphia, Obama celebrated his own racial heritage but also demonstrated his ability to view the black community with a measure of objectivity and, when necessary, criticism--caring criticism. But this was no Sister Souljah moment. He did not sacrifice Wright for political ends. He hailed the good deeds of his former minister, noting that Wright's claim that America continues to be a racist society is rooted in Wright's generational experiences. And Obama identified the sources of racial resentment held by whites without being judgmental. With this address, Obama was trying to show the nation a pathway to a society free of racial gridlock and denial. Moreover, he declared that bridging the very real racial divide of today is essential to forging the popular coalition necessary to transform America into a society with a universal and effective health care system, an education system that serves poor and rich children, and an economy that yields a decent-paying jobs for all. Obama was not playing the race card. He was shooting the moon.

Obama delivered his speech in a stiff manner. The melodious lilt and cascading tones that typically characterize his campaign addresses were not present. This was a speech in which the words--not the delivery--counted. He began with a predictable notion: slavery was the original sin of the glorious American project. Removing that stain has been the nation's burden ever since, and he tied his campaign to that long-running endeavor: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign--to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America." And he proclaimed that due to his own personal story--"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas"--he both recognizes the need to heal this divide and possesses an "unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people." Unlike the black leaders of recent years, Obama identified with both the winners and losers of America: "I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible." He is E Pluribus Unum.

You can read the rest here.

Might we have to wait until the first ballot at the Democratic convention at the end of August to know who will be the Democrats' presidential nominee?

It's already a much-noted mathematical fact that it is virtually impossible for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to win enough pledged delegates (via the primaries and the caucuses) to grab 2025 delegates, a majority of all the delegates (pledged delegates plus superdelegates). So the nearly 800 super Ds will be a decisive bloc.

The superdelegates, of course, do not have to say for whom they expect to vote at the convention, though they are free to do so. HRC has been faring better than Obama among the superdelegates who have committed publicly. But Obama has been steadily closing this gap, and Clinton leads 248 to 213 in the superdelegate race. Now that it seems possible--and probable--that this close Obama-Clinton race will continue on competitively through the final primaries in June, there is incentive for those 300-plus undeclared superdelegates to stay mum and see how the contest plays out.

Come the end of the primary and caucus season, even with the declared superdelegates factored in, neither candidate may have enough delegates to claim the prize. At that point, more undeclared superfolk may start proclaiming their preferences--or they may not. Which means that for June, July, and August--when the elections and debates are long done--the race may be shaped by the public and not-so-public hunt for superdelegates. The media will try to track the SDs, as the campaigns pursue them with vigor.

But remember that a committed superdelegate does not have to keep his or her word. They can flip. So even if one candidate claims a majority of delegates based on the public declarations of superdelegates, that will not mean that he or she has the nomination in his or her pocket. Life is change, right? External events--or internal deals--could intervene and cause committed superdelegates to reconsider for the best or worst of reasons. Whichever candidate is in second place in total delegates will have a strong incentive to remain in the race (as long as the gap is not so large) until the convention, just in case anything happens.

So prepare yourself for several months of waiting and jockeying and perhaps even....suspense at the Democratic convention. In a close race, it will be hard to call the contest on the basis of superdelegate pronouncements. A commitment is not a vote--especially for politicians.

During a conference call on Wednesday morning, David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Barack Obama, pointed to what he called a "warning sign" for Democrats: the exit polls from Mississippi, where Obama on Tuesday beat Hillary Clinton 61 to 37 percent. Plouffe noted that when Democratic voters who participated in this primary were asked "which candidate do you think is honest and trustworthy," 50 percent said Clinton was not. Seventy percent of the Democrats polled said Obama was honest and trustworthy. That's a 20-point integrity gap--and its among Democrats. Certainly, many Democrats elsewhere--such as in states where Clinton won big--do not share this distrust of Clinton. But Plouffe is right: numbers like these ought to give Democrats, be they voters or super-delegates, pause.

Another interesting factoid from the exit polls: who's the more vicious candidate. The exit pollsters asked Democrats in Mississippi if either Obama or Clinton has attacked "the other unfairly." Sixty-one percent said that Clinton has; 39 percent said that Obama has. So in addition to the integrity gap, there was a 22-point nasty gap. Again, Democratic voters in states that went for Clinton may not see this the same way. And given that the Mississippi Democratic electorate included many African Americans, this number may reflect a sentiment held more by black Democrats than white Democrats. (Remember South Carolina?) Nevertheless, all this is food for thought for Democrats: do they want a presidential candidate that many voters within their own ranks consider unfair and not honest?

For more of a breakdown of the Mississippi vote--particularly the racial component (short answer: Clinton won whites; Obama won blacks)--see my colleague Jonathan Stein's posting at MotherJones.com.

On Friday afternoon, the Clinton campaign took the unusual step of convening a second conference call of the day for reporters. And it was a sorry spectacle.

What had prompted the call was the report that Samantha Power, who that morning had resigned as a foreign policy aide to Barack Obama after a news story noted she had called Hillary Clinton a "monster," had told the BBC, during an interview, that Obama's withdrawal plan for Iraq was a "best-case scenario." In that interview, she said, Obama "will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator."

On the conference call, the Clintonites pounced on these comments. Retired General Wesley Clark said he found Power's remarks about Obama's Iraq policy "quite disturbing." Jamie Rubin, a Clinton foreign policy aide, derided Power as Obama's foreign policy "Svenagli or guru" and claimed her remarks about Iraq were proof that Obama cannot create an efficient and effective foreign policy team, calling the episode "amateur hour" for the Obama campaign. He claimed Power's comments showed that Obama's private position was different than his public posture on Iraq. Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications direction, insisted that Power's statements meant that Obama's vow to withdraw troops from Iraq was nothing but a political promise. Also on the call for the Clinton campaign was Lee Feinstein, another foreign policy adviser to Clinton, and Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachussetts liberal and leading member of of the Out of Iraq caucus in the House.

This was overkill. During the BBC interview, Power had said that Obama, in removing troops from Iraq, "will rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think--it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, 'Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.'" In other words, a campaign proposal is just that: a proposal. And only a fool would think that a military plan would be applied to reality without change a year after it was devised.

But the Clintonites campaign saw an opportunity to go for the jugular. And they did--jumping up and down on Power's not-yet-cold dead (politically, that is) body. On the call, I wanted to ask, "Have you no decency?" I did inquire why the Clinton crowd was attacking Obama for a policy that in this regard mirrors Clinton's position. (Her plan for withdrawal: get into the White House, spend the next 60 days consulting with national security aides and Pentagon chiefs, and cook up a plan for a withdrawal that would aim to bring back one or two combat brigades a month.) Rubin and the others replied by emphasizing Power's statement that Obama's plan--and his call for a withdrawal within 16 months--was a "best-case scenario. They insisted this meant Obama was not committed to his deadline and was, consequently, misleading voters.

Their response was not persuasive--at least not to NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, who asked them to explain why this attack on Power and Obama was "fair."

It was an ugly moment. Power, a talented journalist, academic, and thinker who has done tremedous work regarding genocide, had been driven off the campaign, in part because the Clinton campaign had immediately called for her head after news hit of the "monster" remark. (A classier move for Clinton would have been for Clinton to have sent a note to Power saying, "Let's have lunch. You'll see I'm no monster.") Now on what was probably the worst day of Power's professional life, the Clinton camp was trying to use a comment of hers to undermine a key selling point of the Obama campaign. At the same time, Rubin kept saying how bad he felt for Power this afternoon.

The Democratic foreign policy gang is not that big. Everyone knows one another. (Think chess team in high school.) And Rubin and the others were doing all they could to slam Power, an important member of this group, for political gain. I've known Rubin and Feinstein for decades and have appreciated their hard work in the field of foreign policy wonkery. (I met Rubin in the early 1980s when he was working on arms control matters for a public interest outfit.) I was sorry to see them a part of this.

After the conference call, the Obama campaign sent out an interesting Washington Post clip from 2004. Headline: "Comments on Iraq War In Error, Says Kerry Aide." The article begins:

A top national security adviser to John F. Kerry said yesterday that he made a mistake when he said the Democratic nominee probably would have launched a military invasion to oust Saddam Hussein if he had been president during the past four years.

On Aug. 7, Jamie Rubin told The Washington Post that "in all probability" a Kerry administration would have waged war against Iraq by now if the Massachusetts Democrat were president.

The Bush campaign, eager to portray Kerry as holding the same position as the president after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, seized on Rubin's comments as evidence that the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates share similar views on the war, in retrospect. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said the two candidates agreed about "sending our troops to war."

"To the extent that my own comments have contributed to misunderstanding on this issue....I never should have said the phrase 'in all probability' because that's not Kerry's position and he's never said it," Rubin said in a statement. "That was my mistake."

On the conference call, Rubin had been doing to Power and Obama what the Bush campaign had done to him and Kerry. For many Democrats, that is the big problem of the Clinton campaign.

Let me stipulate that the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign, like all campaigns, spin and do their best to present facts and assertions in the manner most advantageous to their candidates. But so far in the Democratic presidential contest, the Clintonites have pushed the envelope of spin further than the Obama crew. Their Ken Starr attack is the latest proof of this.

In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries, Clinton aides repeatedly blasted Barack Obama for his ties to Tony Rezko, a developer whose corruption trial began this week. They constantly prodded journalists to grill Obama about Rezko. Obama has not been accused of anything improper in the Rezko affair, except becoming involved in a personal real estate transaction with Rezko when Rezko was already under investigation. But his relationship with Rezko is certainly fair game for reporters, even if the Clinton spinners are suggesting Obama engaged in significant wrongdoing without being able to back up such allegations.

Even though Rezko was a prominent part of Hillary Clinton's "kitchen sink" attack on Obama before March 4, Clinton aides fiercely maintain that questions about Clinton's personal finances are out of bounds. Yesterday, her campaign hurled the ultimate insult at the Obama camp, complaining that it "mimics Ken Starr," the onetime independent counsel who holds a rather high spot on Democrats' list of Most Hated Republicans of All Time.

What caused the Clinton campaign to throw this ultimate insult at Obama? The Obama campaign, following the losses in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, raised the issue of Clinton's missing tax returns. For months, she has refused to release her tax returns. At one point, she said she would only make the records public if she were to become her party's nominee. Now her campaign's position is that the returns will be released sometime around April 15. Her tax returns could answer some intriguing questions about her husband's sources of incomes. (For example, is Bill Clinton receiving money from foreign individuals or entities that would be quite happy to have a First Lad in the White House?) While other past and present Democratic candidates (including Obama) have released their returns, HRC has been overly--some might say, suspiciously--reticent. She even recently complained she was too busy to do so. (She doesn't have an accountant?)

There is nothing wrong with the Obama crew making a fuss about this. (In the past, Clinton complained about a political rival who was not forthcoming on this front.) Still, the Clinton crowd responded with the over-the-top Starr comparison. It was an obvious ploy to immunize Clinton from any and all criticism from the Obama camp: Asking questions about the Clinton's business dealing. See? He's just as bad as that nasty Ken Starr.

How can the Clintonites justify tossing questions about Rezko at Obama but decrying his questions about her tax returns, equating his queries with Ken Starr's inquisition into Whitewater and Monicagate? Well, they don't have to justify this absurd contradiction. They can just keep spinning, throwing what they can at Obama and crying foul when anything is tossed their way. Presenting an honest, logical, fair, and consistent argument is not their aim; winning is.

In January I observed that Barack Obama had a problem:

If the Democratic presidential race is between him and Hillary Clinton--sorry, Senator Edwards--it boils down, in a way to this: Clinton says, believe in my resume; Obama says, believe in me.

Clinton is pitching herself as a woman of experience who can start working for you and our children on Day One. Look, 35 years of policy wonkery and advocacy. Look, a record of accomplishment. (Fill in the number of children in fill in the state have health insurance because of her.) Look, years of traveling overseas as First Lady, years of hard toil--including working with (gasp!) Republicans--in the Senate, and years of doing political battle in the trenches. All of this is measurable and confirmable. A voter can easily evaluate her case and judge whether she's right for the job.

Obama is selling himself as...himself. That is, Obama is insisting that he has the ability to create a new politics--a transformative, overcoming-the-divide politics--because of who he is, because of his character and considerable personal attributes. Sure, he points to his past as a community organizer and civil rights lawyers and to his work in the Illinois state senator and the U.S. Senate to bolster his argument that he possesses the right stuff. But his is not a campaign of resume-waving. He's running on his soul. And Obama goes further than asking voters to hire him as their advocate. He issues an invitation: join me in this grand cause to change politics, change government, and change the nation. He speaks of his campaign as a movement and compares it to the great social movements of America's past.

With Obama, it's not about his career highlights, it's about him. To buy his case, a voter must believe in him, have faith in him, place hope in him--must have (or feel) a connection with him. And this is where the problem kicks in.

I noted that given the short time available to Obama prior to the Super Tuesday contests of February 5, he would not have the opportunity to connect directly with enough voters because he would be busy hopscotching about the country. Now he has the opposite problem.

After the Wyoming caucus this Saturday and the Mississippi primary on Tuesday, there will be no caucus or election until the critical Pennsylvania primary on April 22. That means: five weeks of campaigning uninterrupted by actual events (i.e., elections). One question for Obama is, in this period of too-much time, can he sustain his pitch?

Clinton's selling point is a conventional one: I'm experienced, I know policy, I'm a fighter on pocketbook issues, I can do the heavy lifting. In other words, she wants voters to make a rational decision and hire her on the basis of her resume. Obama wants voters to feel a certain way about him, his campaign, politics, and the potential for change. He inspires. She PowerPoints.

Obama has demonstrated he can bond with voters and motivate them--even if he failed to do so with the majority of voters in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island. But the issue is, if he does connect with Pennsylvania voters, can he keep that up over a period of five weeks? Clinton's mundane argument for herself may lend itself better to repetitive recitation than Obama's unconventional case. If Obama does indeed succeed in stirring that intense feeling within Pennsylvania voters, will it be susceptible to fading over a long stretch of time. Put simply, what will wear least well: Obama's increasingly familiar rhetoric of hope, change, and new politics, or Clinton's prosaic policy pronouncements and resume-pushing?

There's no need to make a prediction. But Obama, this year's fresh candidate, may have a challenge keeping things not only real but fresh over the long pre-Pennsylvania slog. Clinton, for good or bad, has no such burden.

I was right about Pennsylvania, wasn't I?....Here's the dispatch on the March 4 election results I posted at MotherJones.com:

Now it's on to the Democratic death-march in Pennsylvania.

By winning decisively in Ohio and Rhode Island and narrowly in Texas, Senator Hillary Clinton managed to keep her presidential aspirations alive and guaranteed that the bitterly-fought Democratic contest will slog on for weeks, at least until April 22, when Pennsylvania (with its 188 delegates) votes. With these victories, Clinton put an end to Barack Obama's streak--though he still maintains a significant, if statistically slight, lead in the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses. (Due to the rules governing Texas' odd joint primary-caucus, it seemed possible on Tuesday night, even probable, that Obama would pocket a majority of the delegates there, despite placing second in he popular vote.) More important, Clinton earned the right to claim that her case against Obama, which she and her aides sharpened in recent days, has been seconded by Democratic voters, including two important blocs for the party: blue-collar Dems in Ohio, a decisive state in general elections, and Latino Democrats in Texas. Obama netted his only primary win of the night in Vermont.

At long last, Clinton and her strategists seemed to have gained traction with their attacks on the candidate of hope. As Firewall Tuesday approached, the Clinton campaign did not introduce any new themes. But it did tinker with the mix and accused Obama of falling short on integrity, credibility and experience. This new mash-up was a success. Catching a break because the corruption trial of Obama's onetime friend and contributor Tony Rezko began this week, Clinton aides repeatedly clamed there were "unanswered questions" about Obama's relationship with Rezko. Obama's aides countered that there were no unanswered questions about this much-investigated episode. (Obama, accused of no wrongdoing in the Rezko matter, has acknowledged it was dumb for him to have entered into a real estate deal with Rezko, especially since the politically-wired developer was under investigation at the time.) Prodded by the Clintonites, reporters started grilling Obama anew about Rezko. And being asked about the dirty dealings of a former pal is never helpful to a candidate selling change and reform. Simultaneously, Obama came under fire--from the Clinton campaign--for falsely denying that a campaign adviser had met with Canadian officials and discussed Obama's position on NAFTA. (The aide denied press reports that he had told the Canadians that Obama's criticism of NAFTA was merely political posturing.) It looked as if Obama the Inspirer was not playing straight.

While casting Obama as just another shifty, sleaze-tainted pol, Clinton and her lieutenants pumped up the volume on their well-worn charge that he's not ready for prime time--that is, when the phone rings in the White House in the middle of the night because there's a crisis somewhere. The Obama camp quickly cooked up a clever retort--Clinton failed her red-phone moment by voting for George W. Bush's Iraq war measure--yet Clinton's heavy-handed commercial, if did not persuade any individual voter in Texas or Ohio, did define the discourse (and media coverage) in the days before these primaries. Experience, not hope, was the main subject of the debate. Advantage: Clinton.

On top of all this, Clinton succeeded where she had recently faltered: convincing working-class Democrats that she's their woman. In the contests after Super Tuesday, Obama penetrated into Clinton's base and coaxed away such voters, as he racked up eleven wins in a row. In Ohio on Tuesday, Obama fared well among Democrats who attended college (53 to 46 percent), but Clinton clobbered him among Democrats who did not (62 to 37 percent). She also walloped him in union households (54 to 45 percent). With the economy rated as the top concern of Democratic voters in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island (it tied with the Iraq war in Vermont), Clinton scored with her steady--if not always inspiring--insistence that she's a heavy-lifter when it comes to kitchen table issues. She also renewed her bonds with other core voters: women and the elderly.

In Texas, the Democratic electorate was more split. Clinton won 64 to 34 percent among Democrats over 65 years of age. Obama led narrowly in the under-64 group, 51 to 48 percent. In other words, the old folks kept Clinton competitive. So, too, did Latinos, who went for Clinton 63 to 35 percent. White Democrats in the Lone Star State favored Clinton by an 11-point margin. Voters with incomes over $50,000 supported Obama, 52 to 48 percent. Those earning less went with Clinton, 51 to 49 percent.

Clinton's advocates will now argue it's back to the pre-sweep days--when she won in New Hampshire, Nevada and several Super Tuesday states by assembling a coalition of classic Democrats--and the race is on. But the math doesn't change. As Obama's campaign aides have been maintaining for weeks, Clinton's triumphs in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas will not net her a significant pickup in delegates. "We have nearly the same delegate lead we had this morning," Obama told supporters at a rally in San Antonio, as the Texas results came in.

The Obama and Clinton spinners will bicker over the significance of the March 4 contests.....

You can read the rest here.

Get ready to get sick of Pennsylvania.

I m not making any predictions about what will happen in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island, but my hunch is that, whatever the final tallies will be, when the dust and rust settles, Hillary Clinton will still be in the race. Clintons don't quit. And she will not be forced out of the race short of a cataclysmic event (say, Bill endorses Barack Obama).

That means, Helllllloooooooo, Keystone State. The Pennsylvania primary--in which 188 delegates will be on the line, is not until April 22. Between March 5 and then, there are only two other contests: a caucus in Wyoming on March 8 (18 delegates) and a primary in Mississippi on March 11 (40 delegates). Otherwise, there's nothing but weeks and weeks of time before Pennsylvania. The campaigns will be able to camp out there and treat the big state almost like Iowa and New Hampshire. The candidates will load up on Philly steak sandwiches and overdo the Rocky metaphors, and the politerati (and viewers of cable news) will, by the time the primary occurs, know details of Pennsylvania counties (Hey, what's the unemployment rate in Lycoming? Who did the Susquehanna Shopper endorse?) they never expected they would care about.

With Pennsylvania looming large on the horizon, Clinton will have a mathematical (even if unlikely) possibility of gaining on Obama's pledged delegates lead. And she and her allies can use this possibility to justify prolonging the battle. Moreover, they would have six weeks to throw not only the kitchen sink but the kitchen cabinet, the hallway armoire, the bathroom bathtub, the bedroom chifforobe, and the rec room media unit at Barack Obama. A month and a half is quite a long time in a presidential race. (Ask John McCain.) With all that time to attempt all sorts of stratagems and raise all sorts of questions (real or trumped-up) about Obama, the contest is certainly not beyond hope (there's that word) for Clinton and her posse. And there's always the chance that external events will intervene in her favor. (Perhaps a news story will reveal that Obama once attended a meeting of community organizers at a--gasp!--mosque.)

So get accustomed to the Interstates 76 and 80 and pack your bags--literally or figuratively--for Pennsylvania. It may well be the Democratic contest's Gettysburg.

McCain's Nuclear Waste. John McCain is known as a Republican who has been a leader in the effort to redress climate change. But when it came to passing global warming legislation in the Senate, he sabotaged his own effort because he was gaga about nuclear power. I've posted a piece about this episode at MotherJones.com. It starts:

On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.

Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.

Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.

You can read the rest here.

Talk about generalizations!

In a front-page article on Saturday, the New York Times' Neela Banerjee examined Barack Obama's attempt to gather support among the Jewish electorate, "a cornerstone of the Democratic base." She reported that "in doing so," Obama is "navigating one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics."

To set up her piece, Banerjee wrote, "Winning the trust of Jewish Democratic voters is all the more difficult for Mr. Obama because of the tenuous relations between blacks and Jews." That's some declaration. She neither explains nor sources that assertion of fact. What blacks? Which Jews? She makes it seem like Jews and blacks fight more than Christians and blacks, or Latinos and Muslims. This sort of shortcut journalism simplifies a complex matter and lumps together all blacks and all Jews into enemy camps in a cultural war (or cold war). My hunch: a higher percentage of Jews have supported Obama in the Democratic primaries than white Southern Baptists. So maybe it's the white SBers who have "tenuous relations" with blacks?

Banerjee then goes on to make another error:

Other [Jewish-related] issues [Obama] faces arise from his newness to national politics. While his positions hew to mainstream Democratic views, some critics have expressed concerns that they are not heartfelt.

“His record is relatively sparse, so I want to look at the totality of influences that might bear on Senator Obama,” said Ed Lasky, news editor of the online magazine, American Thinker, whose criticisms of Mr. Obama for aligning himself with allegedly anti-Israel advocates have been widely circulated among Jewish voters.

Do you know who Ed Lasky is? Probably not. A quick Google search shows that he is a conservative and that his on-line magazine is conservative. Nothing wrong with that, right? But look at the article, he wrote in 2004 entitled Why American Jews must vote for Bush:

[T]he anachronistic tendency of American Jews to vote Democratic must end.

This is one tradition that Jews, a people united by their traditions, should put aside. They should refuse to vote for John Kerry for President. Bluntly speaking, his words and actions reveal a man who would imperil our community. Our concerns should not just be about Israel but for the future of the entire Jewish community. It is imperative that Jews understand that the hatred being promoted around the world is directed not just at Israel, but also at Jews as Jews.

Lasky is no honest broker trying to assess Obama. He's a fierce (and apparently religious) partisan who hopes to drive Jews from the Democratic Party into the GOP. He has an agenda--a stark one that obviously colors his approach to Obama. Yet the Times failed to note that. Instead, it cited Lasky as evidence that Obama may have a problem among Jewish Democrats. That would be like saying that McCain has a problem among Republican veterans because retired General Wesley Clark opposes him. Lasky wants to sink Obama because he wants to sink Democrats. His crusade against Obama says nothing about Obama's ability to attract Jewish Democrats.

All this goes to show that when it comes to covering the minefield of race, religion and politics, it's easy for the leading national newspaper to crash into the shoals.

In an earlier version, I referred to Neela Banerjee as a man. I'm told she's a she. My apologies.

Hillary Clinton is helping Barack Obama.

Let's say for the sake of argument--and only for the sake of argument--that Barack Obama is on his way to becoming the Democratic nominee. Weeks ago, when the GOP race basically ended and McCain became the presumed GOP nominee, pundits were suggesting that the Democrats would be at a disadvantage because their hard-fought nominee contest was going to continue for weeks, if not months. McCain and the Republicans, they said, would have extra months to prepare for the general election, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be left behind, punching and poking at each other.

Yet so far that prediction--like many this political season--has not come true. McCain has not reached cruising altitude. Instead, he has been drawn into intra-conservative squabbling. Prominent rightwingers continue to decry him. And this week, McCain got into a fight with a rightwing radio host in Cincinnati. Talk about a unpresidential sideshow. This battle previewed a problem McCain may well have throughout the general election: rightwingers with extreme views of the Democratic candidate--whether it is Clinton or Obama--will be mounting extreme assaults on the Democrat, and McCain may find himself repeatedly in the position of having to distance himself from such attacks. This will peeve his reluctant supporters on the right.

Meanwhile, Obama is contending with Clinton, a first-class and topflight rival. As Tuesday night's debate demonstrated, Obama is getting better as a debater and as a candidate. Competition often is good. In this case, it has pushed Obama to improve his performance in the debates. This was once a weak link in his chain. In earlier debates, he often was tentative and not all that persuasive. In the past two debates, though, he was firm, confident, smooth.

Being challenged by Clinton--in and out of the debates--has forced Obama to hone his already-attractive message. On Tuesday night, he had a good response to her (and others') claim that all his talk of hope and unity is naive:

I am absolutely clear that hope is not enough. And it is not going to be easy to pass health care. If it was, it would have already gotten done. It's not going to be easy to have a sensible energy policy in this country. ExxonMobil made $11 billion last quarter. They are not going to give up those profits easily.

But what I also believe is that the only way we are going to actually get this stuff done is, number one, we're going to have to mobilize and inspire the American people so that they're paying attention to what their government is doing. And that's what I've been doing in this campaign, and that's what I will do as president.

And there's nothing romantic or silly about that. If the American people are activated, that's how change is going to happen.

With this reply, Obama connected his hope-mongering to practical politics. It was an effective formulation of his general campaign pitch--one he will need if he wins the Democratic contest. All the trench warfare with Clinton has strengthened Obama. He will fare better against McCain--should it come to that--because of it.

BYE-BYE BLOOMBERG. I've repeatedly said that I doubted Michael Bloomberg would run for president (particularly because the billionaire apparently had nothing substantial to say about the Iraq war) and even chided my fellow CQ blogger Richard Whalen for pining for the New York City mayor. Recently, a Bloomberg associate told me that Bloomberg was utterly obsessed with running for president--that he talked about it incessantly, that he was poring over polling data and other information related to a possible presidential bid, that he really, really, really wanted to run. But the businessman has yielded to reality, and today, Bloomberg pulled the plug on his nonexistent presidential campaign. Richard, sorry, you'll have to find another dreamboat.

Here's a simple way of summing up Tuesday night's debate in Cleveland between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Minutes after Thursday night's debate in Austin ended, the Clinton campaign zapped out a triumphant email to reporters:

We saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States. Her strength, her life experience, her compassion. She's tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.

That was spin. The Austin debate was no win for Clinton and, as subsequent polls showed, she did not retake the reins, shout giddyup, and ride the presidential race off into a victorious sunset. In fact, Obama, following that debate, continued to gain strength in the polls in the all-important states of Ohio and Texas. Still, Clinton's campaign aides at that moment believed it was not entirely unreasonable--or delusional--to try to claim victory.

No such email followed the conclusion of the Cleveland debate. About an hour after it finished--it took an hour?!--the Clinton campaign disseminated a statement from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a Clinton supporter:

Hillary Clinton showed Ohioans again tonight why she is uniquely qualified to be president and begin turning our economy around on her first day in office. Hillary is the fighter, the doer and the champion Ohio's working families need. No one is better prepared to deliver quality, affordable health care for every American and lead our country as commander in chief.

Note that there was no claim of victory. Another Clinton email cited positive insta-reviews in the media about Clinton. NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, for instance, had said that Clinton "came across very credibly, very strongly as a fighter." That was true. The problem was that Obama came across rather well, too. None of the quotes her campaign found useful described Clinton's overall performance as a game-changer. And that's the point. She did perform in a fine manner. But Obama, coming across as smooth, confident, smart, passionate, and poised, did at least as well, if not better. It was the Clinton camp that wanted more and more debates. But Obama keeps improving, while she long ago hit the ceiling (and it's a high ceiling) in terms of debate performance.

So the Clinton campaign was--finally--unable to spin a victory claim. That would be playing with reality too much. And when a presidential candidate's spinners cannot claim a debate win, that candidate is in trouble.

For my insta-review of the debate, posted at MotherJones.com, click here.

The talk on Friday morning was not about John and Vicki (that's McCain and Iseman, the lobbyist) but Barack and Hillary, and the closing moment of Thursday night's debate, when they shook hands and Clinton said she was "absolutely honored" to be by Obama's side in the debate. The Clinton campaign, as I've noted elsewhere immediately tried to spin this moment into proof she is more presidential than he is. But it looked to me that she might be tiring of fighting him--and fighting the tide.

Is pessimism setting in within the Clinton camp? Obama is closing in on Clinton in polls in both Texas and Ohio, and campaign trend lines seem to be holding in his favor. A few hours before the debate, I spoke to one of the more prominent Hillary boosters in Washington. This person said, "I'm pretty pessimistic. We're all trying to keep our heads up. Even if she did everything right from this point on and started to close the gap, it might not be enough. She's not going to become a young guy who's an inspirational speaker because it's a better strategy."

This Clintonite laughed sadly at his own quip and went on: "She has played to all of her strengths. But everything has gelled for Obama. He's a sanctimonious guy. But we can't make that case."

I wonder if this person's sentiment is widely shared--or spreading--through Clintonland. And if some Clinton people are now thinking in such terms, what will be their attitude should she fail to beat back Obama in Ohio and Texas? The Clintons are famous for their grit, for not yielding to defeat. Bill Clinton came back from a loss in Arkansas to retake the governor's office and, years later, refused to be driven out of the White House by one damn embarrassing scandal. She survived the Monica madness and won a Senate seat in an adopted state. In 1992, Bill famously told voters he would fight "until the last dog dies." Will that dog be barking--or whimpering--after Ohio and Texas?

Pay attention, young presidential candidates-to-be, this seems to be the lesson of the 2008 election so far: voters like winners.

Barack Obama's slam-dunk victory on Tuesday over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin is the latest proof of this theory, for he's making Clinton look like Rudy Giuliani. Both the former NYC mayor and the current junior senator from New York state thought they could sit back and absorb a string of losses, just waiting for when the stars would align perfectly for them. Giuliani saw Florida as his electoral heaven. After Super Tuesday, Clinton gazed at the working-class neighborhoods of Ohio and the great plains of Texas and saw her Gettysburg. (She, of course, would be the North.) But the best-laid plans of mice and men and campaign strategists often go awry. By the time the Republican circus hit the Sunshine State, Giuliani looked like a loser; he had placed out of the money in all the previous contests--and Florida Republican voters validated that impression. And after losing eight straight contests to Obama after Super Tuesday, Clinton also had a big L on her forehead (and it doesn't stand for liberal).

One of the most interesting exit poll numbers from Wisconsin was this: of the Democratic voters who made up their minds in the four weeks prior to the election, Obama beat Clinton 62 to 37 percent. Of those who a month ago knew whom they would support, 50 percent chose Clinton over 49 percent for Obama. What changed in the past four weeks? Clinton and Obama were the same people they were in mid-January. Their resumes were the same. They each were making the same case for his or her candidacy. What had changed was that Obama had won a bunch of elections--and Wisconsin voters had gotten a chance to see him up and close and personal, given that there was plenty of time before this primary for Obama to campaign in the state.

This is--duh!--bad news for Clinton. You can't win by losing. And as the two move toward Ohio and Texas--which could end this race--Clinton has only lost more steam. (Obama also beat her in Hawaii on Tuesday.)

The morning after Wisconsin, a radio show host asked me, "What the heck can she do now?" I dunno. In Wisconsin, Hillary did it all. She went negative on Obama big-time, accusing him of plagiarism, charging him with cowardice for not adding an extra debate to the schedule, and blasting his plans for health care, Social Security, and the mortgage crisis. She went populist--which is right out of the Democratic playbook for candidates in trouble. She held events where she showed off her masterful command of policy details. And she made the same I've-got-more-experience-than-he-does case. That's everything she can do. And the voters said, No thank you.

With Ohio and Texas looming--the primaries are March 4--there's little room for improvement or change in her strategy. The cliche is that success breeds success. Success is the missing ingredient in her campaign. And there's not much she can do about that now.

To see my full report on Wisconsin for Mother Jones, click here.

Are Democratic voters in Ohio and Texas different from those in Virginia?

That's the working assumption--or prayer--of Hillary Clinton, especially now that she was embarrassed by Barack Obama in Virginia (wham: 29 points!), Maryland (bang: 27 points!), and the District of Columbia (pow: 51 points!). But is there any reason to believe that assumption is valid?

As I point out elsewhere, Obama won just about everybody's vote among the Democratic electorate in Virginia and Maryland: women, men, low-income people, the well-to-do, the young, the old, Latinos. Clinton only held on to white women. Ohio and Texas are made up of the same folks (with Latinos comprising more of the Lone Star State's population than in Virginia). Will they not react in a similar fashion to Obama and Clinton?

By the time Ohio and Texas roll around (March 4), Clinton will have no name-recognition advantage in either state. Obama will have plenty of time after next Tuesday's Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries--both of which he is expected to win--to work those two states. And so far in this campaign, whenever Obama has had the chance to spend time in a state, he has done rather well. The major disappointment for the Obama camp this year has been California. But one can argue that that in the short period between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Obama did not have enough time to campaign in the Golden State and connect with its many voters. That won't be true for Ohio and Texas.

Then there's the money. Obama has opened up a fundraising lead. In Ohio and Texas, he will have more money than she will for ads and organization. And his staff appears to be working quite well these days, while Clinton has had to weather a staff shakeup amid a losing streak.

So does Clinton have a leg-up in these (possible) make-or-break states? Maybe not. Is there more affection for Clinton (or the Clintons) in Texas and Ohio than elsewhere? The playing field in each state seems pretty level to me. Each candidate will have a full opportunity to make his or her case.

Now imagine if Obama wins either. What happens to Clinton's rationale? It's blown apart on the prairie wind or it sinks in the Cuyahoga. Given that the Democratic Party awards delegates proportionally, if Obama does prevail in Ohio or Texas, the delegate count could still be close. At this point, it's essentially mathematically impossible for either candidate to win enough delegates through the primaries to reach the magic number. (Superdelegates will be needed by either to get over the top.) But should Obama end up winning more states than Clinton, bagging a big state or two, winning in swing states (such as he did in Missouri, Colorado and Virginia), and opening up a lead in pledged delegates, she will not have much of an argument left. (Except for maybe this one: the superdelegates really, really like me.)

Clinton could well be right: the race may turn on Ohio and Texas. But that could be her last stand. She should not forget a famous cry: Remember the Alamo!

Busy, busy voting today....Does Hillary Clinton have a chance at winning Virginia? That's one question, as the Potomac Primary occurs. And if you want to ponder the Maryland primary, where Barack Obama is expected to win, consider this: Clinton has the governor and his machine (such as it is) behind her. It might still not be enough for her. As for the District of Columbia primary, the big news before the voting started was that Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district's nonvoting House member, endorsed Obama. But she did so the night before Election Day, thus minimizing the impact of her endorsement. How to read this? She wanted to be with the predicted winner but did not want to aggravate the Clinton crew. In the meantime, the other political news is the so-called John Edwards primary. For MotherJones.com, I've examined whether Edwards really has a choice. The bottom line: no. Here's that article:

THE JOHN EDWARDS ENDORSEMENT: A LAST CHANCE TO PROVE HE'S NO PHONY
by David Corn
MotherJones.com

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an influential Hillary Clinton fundraiser. When the subject of John Edwards (still in the race at that time) came up, she started sputtering about his hypocrisy. His expensive hair cut, his big house--the guy's a phony, she exclaimed derisively, and his populist, anti-Washington, help-the-poor rhetoric was all just for show. He won't last.

She was right on that final point. As for his authenticity, that was a question that chased Edwards. During his six years in the U.S. Senate (1999 to 2005), Edwards was no working-class hero. He did not develop a reputation as a firebrand willing to take on the powerbrokers of the nation's capital. At that time, Senator Paul Wellstone was the populist champion in the Senate (until his tragic death in October 2002). Wellstone waged one fight after another against corporate interests, lobbying influence, and the sway of big-money. I don't recall Edwards standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him during all these uphill battles.

Yet on the campaign trail, Edwards became Joe Hill in a suit.

Wellstone once told me that you always have allow for redemption within politics. And perhaps Edwards' conversion was genuine. Why not give him the benefit of the doubt? His message was powerful and well-delivered--even if not embraced by a plurality of Democratic voters. But if Edwards wants to prove he was truly speaking his heart and mind, he has no choice when it comes to endorsing one of the remaining Democratic contenders. He cannot support Hillary Clinton.

During the campaign, as he called for ending poverty, Edwards pointed to Clinton as part of the problem. Let's roll the tape on a speech he gave in New Hampshire last summer:

The system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things....

Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming...

It's a game that never ends, but every American knows -- it's time to end the game. And it's time for the Democratic Party -- the party of the people -- to end it. The choice for our party could not be more clear. We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other. The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale, the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House or the Senate.

There is no way to read that passage as not a direct assault on Clinton. Edwards was calling her out as a "corporate Democrat" willing to benefit from the crooked politics of Washington. The reference to the renting of the Lincoln Bedroom was a sharp punctuation mark. (During the Bill Clinton presidency, big donors to his campaign were rewarded with overnights in the White House.)

This was not a solo blast. Campaigning in Iowa in November, Edwards made it explicit:

The presidential candidate who has raised the most money from Washington lobbyists is not a Republican. It's a Democrat. The candidate who has raised the most money from the health industry--insurance companies and drug companies--is not a Republican. It is a Democrat…. And the candidate who has raised the most money from the defense industry, is not a Republican. It is a Democrat. And all those descriptions fit the same candidate. They're all Senator Clinton.

At the debate before the New Hampshire primary, Edwards slammed Clinton for being aligned with "the forces of status quo" dead-set on blocking change in Washington.

Those were some charges. Did Edwards mean what he was saying about Clinton? Did he mean it when he proclaimed that poverty eradication was the cause of his life?

In the past few days, Edwards has met with Clinton, and he's due to see Barack Obama, presumably to figure out if he should endorse either. If Clinton ends up the Democratic nominee, it will not be hypocritical for Edwards to campaign for her. He can reasonably argue she will be a better president than John McCain. But if the choice is Obama or Clinton, he is stuck. Were Edwards to pick her over him, he would be endorsing a "corporate Democratic" fronting for the status quo over the fellow whom he approvingly cited as an advocate for change. If Edwards pulled such a move, all those powerful words he left behind on the campaign trail would have no meaning....

You can read the rest here.

The fish rots from the head.

That's a not-so-polite way of saying that the person to blame whenever a campaign is not zipping along is the candidate, not his or her staff. Today, Patty Solis Doyle is the scapegoat for a Hillary Clinton campaign mired in a losing streak. On Sunday, she was dumped as HRC's campaign manager and replaced by Maggie Williams, who in 1990s served as chief of staff to First Lady Clinton.

Whether or not it was Solis' doing, the Clinton campaign is in the middle of a dangerous stretch. After splitting Super Tuesday with Barack Obama, the campaign is conceding a series of contests to Barack Obama (including two of the three February 12 primaries: Maryland and Washington, DC). The Clinton camp is allowing Obama to rack up the wins, while it prepares to put him down on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, two delegate-rich states. This reminds me of that familiar action movie device: let the enemy hordes take one position after another right before you spring a lethal trap on them. You know the scene. As the bad guys draw nearer, the hero-protagonist keeps saying, "Wait for it, wait for it." Those of lesser stout are in near-panic and want to pull the trigger too soon. "No, no," the all-wise, against-the-odds hero says. "Just wait for it." Then--Ka-boom!--the evil ones are dispatched.

Hillary as King Leonidas leading 300 Spartans at Thermopylae against the evil Obama-ites? Well, that may be stretching it. But this strategy must have some of her people chewing up their fingernails. My colleague Jonathan Stein dubs this plan "Rudy 2.0." As the Clinton clan waits, Obama is getting Big Mo on his side; he will truly have bragging and front-runner rights should he bag Virginia on Tuesday and sweep the Potomac Primaries. Between this clump and the Ohio/Texas shootout, there are only two other matches: Hawaii and Wisconsin on February 19. Both of those are good territory for Obama. (He grew up in Hawaii.)

Back to Solis. If she was the one who cooked up the wait-until-Ohio-and-Texas plan, HRC went along with it. Same with any strategic decisions that contributed to the Iowa loss, which got the ball rolling for the Barackians. Now it could well be that Solis has not managed the campaign well. There are 500 or so staffers to coordinate. She has to supervise a bevy of strategists, communicators, and planners. That's a tough job--especially when you're dealing with big egos.

Ever since Iowa, there's been grumbling from Clinton aides about the management team. But much of this complaining was directed at Mark Penn, the chief strategist. On Election Day afternoon in New Hampshire, a senior Clinton adviser told me that she was looking forward to what she assumed would be a loss, for it would cause a much-need shakeup in the campaign staff and force Penn out. When I spotted this aide celebrating Clinton's victory that night, I mentioned that the win probably had saved Penn's job. "I hope not," she snapped. "That would be the wrong lesson learned." More recently, another longtime Clinton aide said that she, too, would be delighted to see Penn depart. "He can't win Democratic primaries," she said. "And that's a drawback when you're in a Democratic primary."

A candidate not pleased with a campaign manager cannot freeze out the manager or lessen her or his authority without putting the campaign's entire management at risk. But a candidate can nudge a strategist aside. A Clinton insider tells me that Penn's influence has been waning and that these days he's more desk-bound--that is, confined to his office--than he has been during the previous months. Could it be that the real shakeup is not the Williams-for-Solis substitution but a decline in Penn's influence?

Still, I come back to my first point. A candidate's fault always lies not in his advisers but in himself. After John Kerry's 2004 defeat, there was much harrumphing about Bob Shrum, who has a string of high-profile losses on his resume. But if Kerry took bad advice from Shrum, he's the one to blame. Hillary Clinton chose Solis, made the decision to compete in Iowa (which some of her aides wanted to skip), and embraced Penn, a corporate consultant whose company aids and abets union-busting businesses, as her strategy guru. She got what she paid for. (Penn made over $4 million last year working for the Clinton campaign.) And now she's left with the need to stop Obama in two big states. Sure she could lose each--Remember the Alamo!--and still remain in the delegate hunt. But the race would be tougher for her; she would be left with only one more fallback position: Pennsylvania on April 22. And even King Leonidas--with the best strategic and management advice--would have a tough time defeating Luke Skywalker.

I've been in Chicago covering Supersaturated Tuesday from the Obama election night celebration. Here's the report I filed for MotherJones.com:

By the time that Super Tuesday finally arrived, the mystery was long gone. The day that had loomed for so long had lost its melodramatic make-or-break status for the Democrats. Hours before the vote-counting began, the top strategists for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were pitching the same line: the results would not be decisive and whoever ended up the winner would walk away with merely a small edge in delegates. And as the vote tallies started to come in, both campaigns declared non-defeat. That is, they each claimed to have done well. "Encouraging results," Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist said. "We're having a very strong night," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. Both were right.

The two campaigns had plenty of data to spin as the results materialized. Clinton triumphed in California (by an overwhelming margin), Massachusetts (where a big turnout in women negated that Kennedy magic), Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Obama won in Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Idaho, and Missouri. Last-minute deciders, Penn said, went for Clinton. "Momentum is turning," he insisted. Plouffe noted that Obama was competitive in regions across the nation, that he won the caucus states (showing the campaign's organizational talent), and that he captured states that did not permit independents to vote (Delaware and Connecticut). Clinton was the Queen of California. Obama was the Master of Missouri.

But all that really mattered was the final delegate count (which was not easy to calculate in the hours after the polls shut down but was likely to be close)--and the fact that neither candidate was knocked out of the race. Despite the wipeout in California, Obama's senior aides appeared pleased, as they spoke with reporters at his election night celebration in Chicago. Pre-election polls had shown him trailing in most Super Tuesday states, and their goal had been to survive the day. They did. "The nominating battle will continue well past today's voting," Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, told reporters. Only weeks ago, Clinton strategists were hoping this mega-primary day would end the race in their favor. Now they were talking about the coming slog, as if it had always been inevitable.

Super Tuesday did not live up to its do-or-die reputation because the Democratic field had been downsized to two strong contenders who push rather different memes. Clinton presents herself as the tried-and-tested hard-worker who can get stuff done. Obama offers himself as a transformative figure who can--due to his power to inspire--bring about change. It's math versus music. And after seven years of George W. Bush--during which the music was awful and the math was bad--Democrats crave both proven competence and uplifting inspiration. For many voters, it's a tough either/or. Super Tuesday demonstrated there is no consensus position within the party among its voters.....

You can read the rest here.