Ah yes.  Obama has lead her in pledged delegates every day since Iowa.  Clinton has never won more delegates than Obama on any single day of voting.  Obama won the last 11 contests.  He leads in the popular vote, the pledge delegates and states won.  But....

If he doesn't win all four states tomorrow... he is doomed!!!

Sorry if I don't buy the spin you and Mark Penn are trying to sell.

Hillary needs to win the remaining states by about 15%.  We know she won't do that, so she needs to win states like Ohio and Texas by something like 20%.  Let me know when that happens.  Otherwise, she will start looking a bit like Mike Huckabee.

it is not inconceiveable that obama loses ohio by more than 10 points.

the nafta deal is going to cost him in ohio.

clinton is going to pound the theme of him being a liar all day today in ohio

How is that any different than Norman Hsu?

Let's look at the facts:

HRC returned $900,000.00 in connection with HSU
Obama returned $160,000.00 in connection with Rezko.

I mean to state "political earthquake" is a bit much. The only politician going down is Blagojevich.

Texas does not matter because its a "red" state with a caucus.

Here is a link to what the Candadians say about the Canada brouhaha
Excerpt:

Opposition MPs said it appears obvious to them that the Harper Tories want the Republicans to win and that they have taken steps to help them to do so.

The Harper government may find itself in hot water should the presidential winner be a Democrat, they said.

"This is serious," said Navdeep Baines, the Liberal Party's trade critic.

"If there's a perception there of interference, I think it will definitely put a strain on our relationship in the future."

The brouhaha is somewhat reminiscent of the 2006 election, when Mr. Wilkins lashed back at then-prime-minister Paul Martin for his criticisms of the United States and was criticized for interfering.

For its part, the federal government is saying that there were no calls between itself and any staff members of a campaign team.

The Canadian embassy says on its website that "at no time has any member of a Presidential campaign called the Canadian Ambassador or any official at the Embassy to discuss NAFTA."

Mr. Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, said Mr. Brodie also doesn't remember such a conversation.

Why would the story be that Obama can't knock out Clinton? Isn't it just as true that Clinton can't knock out Obama? NEITHER can close the deal against the other. I see them as being in the same boat, and don't see a need to spin it one way or the other... either we have a winner, or we don't and it goes on between two strong candidates and two closely matched campaigns.

Jerome wrote:

"
If that does wind up to be the case, with Obama actually being named as the actual "political candidate", it will be a political earthquake."

No, it won't be.  People won't care.  And that'll start some teeth gnashing.  Besides, it won't happen until after tomorrow for sure.

You're not going to predict Clinton wins tomorrow, Jerome?  C'mon, ya know you want to!  Heck, even I think she's going to win OH.

But Obama will have widened his delegate lead by the end of the night, I think.  Yup.

Patrick Fitzgerald has said that the Rezko trial will last about three months. So that means if Obama is the nominee we'll be hearing Obama/Rezko until June.

I can't imagine a scenario other than Clinton winning Ohio and Texas.

And then what we'll have is a situation where voters will be taking a long, hard, withering look at Obama.

And the question will be: is Obama so scandal-tainted by direct revelation through court documents that he is forced to concede to Clinton?

If he can't seal the deal, that points to his weakness come November.

"If that does wind up to be the case, with Obama actually being named as the actual "political candidate", it will be a political earthquake. "

Look, I don't want to underplay the impact of Rezko, but if this is the same $10,000 that Obama disclosed, then donated to charity, why would this be a big deal? I mean the campaign contributions thing doesn't seem like a huge thing unless there's play for pay- see Hsu (nearly a mil to Clinton), Ayers, the $170,000 HRC got from that firm with the massive Sexual Harrassment problem, etc.

Obama just needs a draw tomorrow. Hillary needs BIG wins in Ohio and Texas to have any chance of catching him. I don't see that happening. But we'll see soon enough.  

This increase in negative campaigning by Clinton is likely to push more superdelegates to endorse Obama.

Pelosi, Richardson, etc. do not want the Democrats to have a food fight while the Republicans sit back and watch.  Unless Clinton wins TX and OH convincingly and makes significant gains in the delegate count, party leaders will try to cut this off.

Hillary has failed to close the deal in 24 of 35 contests...she is not a closer.

Obama wins 2/3rds of all contests.. that is closing the deal.

The Clinton talking points are being pushed aggressively by their surrogates today.

It was funny this morning when Bill Press had this exchange with John King

Press: why is no one talking about this rezko trial today,John?

King: Well, Bill, if you are on the Clintons e-mail list you know they are talking about it a whole lot.

Press; but, isnt this something that needs to be put out there?

King: Bill, there is no substance to this rezko charge and with the baggage the Clintons have,they should not be pointing fingers.

I am glad that King exposed Press again as a Clinton mouthpiece.

Not surprising that Press was saying today that this needs to go to the convention cus it is so much fun.. clearly, he could give a flip if the dems win in november if it is not HRC.

These surrogates are getting as desperate as the Clintons as they see their meal ticket go down in flames.

"If he can't close the deal this time, maybe he can't close the deal, period."

A win is a win whether by Knock Out, TKO or on points. He might win tomorrow or he might win next month but Hillary doesn't win just because Barack beat her by 150 delegates instead of some bigger number. If Hillary wants to win she needs to actually beat Obama. She can't lose her way to the nomination and declare victory if the defeat is not crushingly huge.

"Conventional wisdom says" is perhaps the most shopworn phrase ever uttered.

Ohio and Texas were complete locks for HRC 4 weeks ago and now they aren't. "Mathematical wisdom" would suggest that Senator Clinton is in serious trouble, especially if Ohio is closer than five points and if Obama wins big around Cleveland, where the bulk of the delegates in No OH are located.

Now you may return to the regulary scheduled program "Hillary Good, Barack Bad" that runs daily here.

The issue though is the story.  He may end up being exonerated, but the constant drip, drip, drip of Rezco and Obama being mentioned will change some people's mind.

A lot of you forget the fact that the Clinton's were exonerated in "Whitewater," too, but that doesn't stop people from bringing it up.

Have we forgotten already what innuendo can do?

I've always been dubious about "internal polls". There are seven hundred polls a day, and why should the polls a campaign pays for be better than the seven hundred paid for by news organizations.

That said, Penn and Wolfson were blaming each other for the mistakes in the Clinton campaign in the LA Times. That does not suggest confidence.

to show she can overtake Obama's 160 PD lead. Currently she's on pace for gaining at most a 10 PD edge tomorrow.

Obama has already closed the deal - he'll go into the convention with the lead in total delegates, if it even makes it that far.  The fact that the Clinton campaign fails to realize that it's finished has no bearing on that.

Maybe Clinton will win the nomination.  But if she does it by raising phony scandals, it will indeed be a continuation of the politics of the past.

Furthermore, she will have driven up her already high negatives, making it even more difficult to win against McCain.

She will have turned off a new generation of voters who will sit out this race.

She will have made it harder for herself.

As the Proverbs teach, "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

Unless Hillary is blown out in all four contests, I think the contest should continue.

If a close campaign extending beyond March 4 is such an awful, enervating, self-destructive prospect for the Party, then why were late contests extending to June scheduled in the first place?  It is b.s. that this has to end Wednesday.

Nice spin, but it will not matter. As others have clearly pointed out in the comments before mine, not only is the NAFTA and Rezko stuff non-scandal-scandals, but we actually have a plethora of actual, real scandals that taint Hillary Clinton. Scandals that Senator Obama, unlike Senator Mudslinger (DLC-NY), hasn't felt the need to keep trying to make political hay out of.

As for closing the deal, Obama already did that on 2/12/08 when he began a string of 11 consencutive primary victories. The deal is done, we're all just waiting for the junior Senator from NY to realize it and acknowledge it.

Uh, that's not "Conventional Wisdom" at all.  That's a NY newspaper writing a pretty blatantly biased article for HRC.

It's really very simple -- if Hillary can't overtake Obama in pledge delegates, she's going to have to destroy the Party to win the nomination.  That's where we're at.

Winning or losing states tomorrow is irrelevant if it doesn't significantly close her pledged delegate gap.  And no one believes that it will.

...no matter what happens in OH and TX.

Oh, but for 24 hours, that's what the Obama folks are probably thinking this morning. If we had only been able to sit on this for 24 hours more, we could have gotten over the goal line. The story is not so much about telling Ohioans one thing while telling the Canadians something else. That's bad enough. It's about Obama himself caught redhanded in a lie. As it is, these breaking revelations that Obama directly lied with a straight face to the cameras may come too late for the impact to be fully felt tomorrow. We will see.

But, that does not mean it didn't happen. It does not mean that this will not remain a huge albatrose around the neck of this candidate who has campaigned almost entirely on the strength of his character and charism. That character lies shattered right now. Mr Hope now looks like Mr. Sneeky, and that reputation can not be recovered, maybe ever. So what does that mean?

Well first it may influence TX and OH. How much? Who knows, but the more important thing is it punctures Obama's campaign narrative. John McCain and the Republicans will have a field day with this if he becomes the nominee. Whenever he addresses crowds they will see through the blarney--not some new sort of politician, but the same old sort we've lived with for the last eight years.

It may take a while for this to actually register with the electorate, but given time it will. It is a very good thing that there are months left to the convention and plenty of delegates and yes Superdelegates (whose job it is to guard against exactly this kind of thing) that we can insure that this country does not make a terrible mistake and hand over to the Republicans a nominee so clearly vulnerable to their inevitable attacks on his credibility and basic truthfulness.

Let's say they come out of tomorrow with effectively a tie and the gap stays about the same in pledged delegates. Conventional wisdom is that Hillary would have had to quit. What? Quit and hand over a nominee who has just been caught redhanded in a direct lie. He stared into the camera and said: "It never happened." WATCH THE VIDEO - LOOK INTO HIS EYES. This video will be burned into the minds of every voter in the country before the right wing media attack machine is done. That would not not serve the Democratic Party very well at all. No, this race must go on. Over the next months the remaining states and the Superdelegates need to look very closely at this man and decide if we want to nominate a candidate that tells the truth. Looks like MI and FL are going to be back in it. We are a long way from over ladies and gentlemen.

what confuses me about the initial post is I'm not sure what the other two times that "Obama" failed to knock HIllary out of the race.

wtf?

Was it the "statistically tied" wisconsin primary? Where Obama failed his supporters by "only" winning by 17?

Was it his 1 point N.H. loss? The one where he won the delegate math. The one that really didn't amount to much in hindsight.

Jerome, the "CW" you cite is quite bad.

The real CW you should profess is Clinton's supposed delegate lead being eroded, tied and surpassed. All through the help of a month long streak of 20+wins (and a 17+ & 19+).

You have to be one of the most consistantly annoying posters on this board. Your constant framing of this primary as a "generational struggle" is kind insulting to people like me who have been active politically for some time. I've worked as a volunteer for tenant's rights for almost 15 years, volunteered to work for a gubenatorial campaign (we lost) and an assembly campaign (we won) and am currently volunteering with a PAC working trying to create a Democratic majority in our state senate for the first time in 50 years.

Not all of us are so bowled by you and your Awesome Movement. There's a lot of hard, boring grunt work involved when you want to change something, and there are a lot of powerful, entrenched interests who won't get outta your way so readily, so be prepared for some setbacks.

But for now, as far as I'm concerned, you're just Short Attention Span Theater until proven otherwise.

Lets say Clinton wins Rhode Island, Texas and Ohio by 10% margins, and somehow the Texas caucus goes okay for her too.  She picks up what, 30 net delegates?  And so he is up 130 or so in pledged delegates after tomorrow, with 600 pledged left?

even in that best case scenario for tomorrow, she will never take the pledged delegate lead and thus it's just stupid that this election is going to go on and on.  I don't care what anyone thinks of Florida and Michigan and superdelegates, if she wins by changing the rules midstream and/or by party bigwigs fiating her victory, the party will be fucked and so will November.

Several points...

I know that Hillary supporters are hoping that things like Rezko and NAFTA-gate will sink Obama, but the reality is quite different...

If Ohioans were able to completely overlook Hillary's obvious marriage (literally) to NAFTA, we must not care about it as much as people think.  Obviously, that ship has passed and the people here have forgiven Hillary for that misadventure.  Since NAFTA has become essentially a non-issue here, some story about he said/she said isn't going to make a difference...  Ohioans all know that both politicians are totally pandering and nothing will change.  Hillary's going to tank her husband's crowning achievement?  C'mon!  Ohians may be ornery, but we're not stupid!

The whole Rezko think is a snoozer... Obama knew this guy, who knew this guy, and he got a good deal on .25 acres of land from this guy, who knew someone else who knew rezko... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....ZZZZZZZZZZz... what?  Oh, yeah...  Listen, these kinds of stories never gain traction with the public.  whether it was Al Gore and Buddhist Monks, Hillary's Hsu guy... no one cares about this kind of stuff... When you are a politician, you're going to get lots of contributions from lots of different people and it's not like you are going to be able to screen everybody...  

But, but, but, Rezko was his friend?  Big deal!  Tom Delay was G.W.'s friend, too, and it didn't mean garbage in the election.  Listen, if this story was a big deal, the Republicans (who have been sliming him mercilessly in their underground media) would have jumped all over this.  They've left it alone.  False Muslims smears have more chance of affecting the public than this Rezko thing.

Here's some reading for y'all.  Better than cluttering up the comments with juvenile flame wars....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-n ix/the-campaign-of-magical-t_b_89500.htm l