Be careful what you wish for, Republicans

Top of the Ticket's Andrew Malcolm has a story on the Limbaugh effect in Texas. It was not observable in Ohio, but in Texas Republican voters broke less heavily for Obama than elsewhere.

Malcolm concludes with this:

But under the category of "be very careful what you wish for":

Wouldn't it be a stunning historical irony if Clinton, who's worked hard to adhere closer to the all-important general election political center than Obama, won the nomination in August and the election in November, all thanks to this vast right-wing conspiracy that briefly swallowed its hate of her in March to save her bacon in Texas?

The Republican Limbaugh voters have miscalculated. I've talked about McCain's opening with lower-class voters (Hillary's electorate) if Obama is nominated. But that vanishes with Hillary as the nominee. How would McCain attack Hillary? I asked this question back in the middle of October last year, when I thought it was going to be Romney. McCain has an even bigger problem attacking Hillary if he's the nominee, it seems to me, because the narrative on him is that he's a military guy with a temper. In the midst of a failed war, I think it would be more difficult for him to attack a woman than Obama.

It's down to the superdelegates

First I have to brag about my prediction. I'm loathe to predict, but I'm glad I made an exception this time--I was only one point off in Ohio and Texas.

So Hillary fights on. It could have been over tonight and it's not. Hillary won Ohio by over ten points and Texas more narrowly. It's exactly what she needed to do.

From Josh Marshall:

A lot's getting said tonight. And a lot of it is baseless speculation. But the one thing that rings true to me is this: The Clinton campaign got rough and nasty over the last week-plus. And they got results. That may disgust you or it may inspire you with confidence in Hillary's abilities as a fighter. But wherever you come down on that question is secondary to the fact that that's how campaign's work. Opponents get nasty. And what we've seen over the last week is nothing compared to what Barack Obama would face this fall if he hangs on and wins the nomination. So I think the big question is, can he fight back? Can he take this back to Hillary Clinton, demonstrate his ability to take punches and punch back? At the end of the day, the winner of the pledged delegate race has the strongest claim to the nomination. Everything else is spin. But it's a strong claim, not incontestable.

Markos Moulitsas concurs: Obama may finally have to go negative. I've never seen him do that. He's never had to do that.

From the Politicker:

Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod hinted to reporters that the senator may now become more aggressive toward the Clinton team and might beginning raising questions about the ethics of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

When I asked Axelrod whether the apparent effectiveness of the Former First Lady’s more negative tone in recent days posed a problem for Obama, he responded: “If Senator Clinton wants to take the debate to various places, we’ll join that debate. We’ll do it on our own terms and we’ll do it in our own way. But if she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that sort of stuff issues, I don’t know why they’d want to go there.”

The words seemed like an allusion to Whitewater, but Axelrod in fact cited the Clintons’ reluctance to release their tax returns as one example where, “for all their yammering about how unfairly they have been treated, they haven’t really been pursued at all by the media on some of these questions.”

The superdelegates are going to decide this thing. Hillary's not going to drop out anytime soon. From the Telegraph:

The 795 super-delegates – Congressmen, party officials and insiders – who have a free vote in choosing the nominee, will be decisive.

Her lead among super-delegates was whittled down to 40 from 90 as Mr Obama surged through 11 victories in February and more and more jumped on his bandwagon.

After last night, many are likely to sit on the fence until Denver.

This is it for Hillary

In the debate the other night I thought Hillary started out weak, just because I'm so underwhelmed by the "misleading fliers" charge. This is the type of thing that I feel was preaching to the choir--if you are already a Hillary supporter you might be angry by this, but who the heck else cares--it's only infuriating if you're a campaign worker. Obama had a strong response comparing his health care plan with hers. Hillary responded, first stumbling with the malapropism "both sides of our campaign" but then had a great, passionate response on universal health care. Obama had a dispassionate response, and there was another back-and-forth.

In the whole exchange, Obama came off very well, carefully explaining his plan, while Hillary came off as too passionate perhaps. Obama would bring it back to details, which he explained effectively, which blunted Hillary's passion.

Then there was the SNL comment by Hillary. "I find it curious that I always have to answer these questions first. I think if we've seen Saturday Night Live, we can say why don't they ask Barack if he's comfortable and would like another pillow." I liked this comment, but I'm biased. I saw the SNL bit, so I felt "in the know." I thought it was hilarious because it's true, the media do love him. But I had a conversation with someone who thought it came off whiny. It sure is hard to be a woman running for president--how the heck do you attack your opponent? This debate was a clear victory for Obama, in my mind. He looked presidential; he looked like a winner; he outshone Hillary.

Obama promised a phased withdrawal from Iraq, but with "ample time" to make the political settlements they need. Both candidates said they would keep residual troops in Iraq. Hillary misfired on an attack on Obama being chair of a subcommittee of the Foreign Relations committee and not holding hearings on Afghanistan. Obama said he wasn't chair of it until the campaign started. Besides, everyone knows that Afghanistan and Iraq are linked; this was not an effective attack by Hillary.

After the commercial break Obama had to respond to a video of Hillary mocking him, which was played in error. Hillary was at a rally and said: "Now I could promise that if we all come together, the skies will open, celestial choirs will sing, light will stream down, and everything will be perfect!" Barack said, "sounds good!" which was funny, but then somewhat bungled his response to Williams query, "What'd ya think of that," because he doesn't have a good sense of humor--he said "I think Sen. Clinton showed some good humor there" which was so wooden. He thankfully added, "I'd give her points for delivery" which got a few laughs. But what about, "Her impression of me was so good, it almost makes me want to vote for her," or "That is totally inaccurate; I've always been careful to only promise one celestial voice, not whole choirs." But Hillary's response was equally insipid: "I was trying to have a little fun. It's hard to find time to have fun on the campaign trail." Sheesh, just terrible.

It all comes down to Ohio. The voters there have been inundated with calls and mailers, even non-Democrats. The weather has been wintry this week, if it's like that Tuesday it'll probably favor Obama. But apparently the cold is going to lift on Monday.

Frank Rich writes:

In the view [of Clinton fans], their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3. In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.