The Week Before Ends

So the day--and the week-- slog to an end. The battle of San Antonio score was an estimated 8,000 for Obama in the suburbs, and 1500 tops for Hillary in the city. It looks like Al G. got burned on Richardson, which happened to me right after Wisconsin. Richardson' s been saying he might endorse "in a few days" for a few weeks.

A lot can still happen over the weekend, the polls are very close in Ohio now and show a bit of a stall in Texas. It still seems likely that Clinton will not gain an appreciable number of delegates, but that Obama might. The Texas caucus alone suggests he'll win more delegates than she in Texas. Since Super Tuesday, as some point out, Obama has done much better than the final polls in each contest.

The ground game, the get out of the vote effort, has been a big factor, and observers suggest the same is going to be true in Texas and Ohio. And according to a story in the New York Times Saturday, it might even be true in Rhode Island, which is no longer a gimme for Hillary. Obama speaks in Providence Saturday. (It's currently the only event on his public schedule.)

What the pundits are likely to be talking about all weekend is: what will Hillary do if...If she loses Texas and Ohio. If she wins one, loses the other. If she wins small popular vote margins in both, but Obama ends the night winning more delegates. I suppose there's even a question of what she would do if Obama wins big in all four states. And nobody knows.

What Hillary has done this week is keep the Obama campaign playing defense, which the Obama campaign has done successfully--Hillary hasn't scored, at least so anyone would know. If she had, there would be some consistency in her campaign, which there isn't. (Shame on you seems years ago.) But it is possible that the visible growth of enthusiasm for Obama has been slowed. Something may happen to reignite it this weekend, or I may be entirely wrong about this--but there are ups and downs in any wave. All that would mean is a slower momentum, with Hillary not losing a lot more of her base.

But after the back and forth of this week, the expectations game playing today (Clintonians actually saying that if Obama doesn't win four blow-outs it signals he's in trouble; Obama's campaign manager saying Hillary can't possibly achieve her goal of getting within 25 delegates total of Obama, and Obama himself saying he'll be happy to hold his delegate lead), I've had one thought: so far nothing the Obama campaign has said or done has made me cringe. It's a whole new feeling.