So, can Hillary really win this thing?
Updated on 05 March 2008
Blog: no surrender then for Hillary Clinton, with a convincing win in Ohio, a razor-thin one in Texas.
Her hopes of securing that presidential nomination are still alive. Even Rhode Island, despite some reports to the contrary, fell her way.
It was a vital psychological boost for a campaign which has been struggling for the last three weeks, as Obama scored eleven straight victories and seemed to have locked up the narrative of the race.
But, and this was made clear by exit polls, over the last three days many of the 20 per cent of voters still undecided suddenly shifted Hillary's way. And she managed to rebuild her old coalition: low-income voters, women, Hispanics.
The reason? According to some strategists attacking Obama clearly works. The '3am phone call' ad, the questions over his national security credentials, his free trade policy and his links to certain lobbyists.
Obama's rather testy performance at the first tough press conference he's had to face hardly helped.
It wasn't just the negative campaigning. Clinton's economic pitch also resonated well, especially among voters worried about their family's financial welfare. Some 60 per cent of them put their faith in her.
As one pundit put it, "Obama's folks lost control of the agenda setting function that a frontrunner usually has." In other words Hillary 'did a McCain'.
The New York Senator was naturally jubilant, with a victory rally after the Ohio result was clear, pointing out that no candidate in history had ever won the White House without winning the primary in the Buckeye state.
And even though Obama has won more states overall, significantly he has failed to win any of the biggest states, in particular places like Ohio and Florida which the Democrats badly need to take at the General election in November.
So, now there's six more weeks of arduous campaigning as both teams take the fight to the next major battleground: Pennsylvania. Or, as Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway put it, "Pennsylvania is the new Iowa." And the real Iowa was only eight weeks ago. That's right, this whole process is only a little over half way through.
'Obama's folks lost control of the agenda setting function that a frontrunner usually has.'Us election pundit
Some of the states still to vote, including Pennsylvania itself, are more natural Clinton territory, but others, like Wyoming and Mississippi are likely to swing strongly in Obama's favour. Everything's still as clear as mud then.
The biggest problem still facing Clinton is the maths.
Even if she were to win decisively in all the remaining states, and even if she managed to get the disqualified delegates from Florida and Michigan included in the final count, there is still no way she can overtake Obama in the number of pledged delegates.
If it does go to the convention then, it will all be up to those superdelegates; and the Democratic leadership badly wants a unifying figure to rally around.
There are plenty who see Mrs Clinton as an obstacle, but no-one has the authority, or the clout, to persuade her to call it a day.
Equally, it will be difficult for Obama to recover his momentum and persuade the party he's the best candidate to take on John McCain.
At the moment the New York Times figures show the superdelegates are fairly evenly divided between Hillary, Barack and those who haven't yet made up their minds. But that could all change in a heartbeat.
All the Democrats know is that now the Republicans have crowned their nominee, every day they keep fighting between themselves, is a day they aren't fighting John McCain. As the party number crunchers might put it, go figure.
