Will this week count her out?
Again, Hillary Clinton is a woman under pressure. Again, people are suggesting this week's primaries in Ohio and Texas, not forgetting Vermont and Rhode Island, may mean the end of her attempt to become America's first female president. And again, it seems she has to pull off a Giants-style last-minute touchdown play, just to keep herself in the race for the Democratic nomination. But the the thing is that yet again, no one can tell whether she can do it - and what happens if she can.
My own assessment of Hillary has oscillated wildly, I admit. Two years ago I'd have said she was simply too divisive to realistically win against any decent Republican candidate: she might appeal to liberal Democrat activists and supporters, but her ultimate unelectability meant they'd be mad to put her forward. But she succeeded somehow in reinventing herself as Mrs. Experienced-and-Dependable, and with no really attractive Republican candidate on show she did appear, a few months ago, a likely winner next November. I thought the Obama thing was a fad, that she'd show him up as lightweight, and then, when she stayed alive after New Hampshire, that Edwards voters would be bound to deliver her the prize. All of that seems far too optimistic now. She's back where she was after Iowa, seemingly having blown her campaign, seeming to be the wrong woman at the wrong time, made irrelevant by the Obama wave.
Well, I agree with all that. She's tried every tactic - ridicule and straight attack - but Barack Obama still eats into what once once a big lead in Ohio and Texas, gathering the votes of women and Hispanic voters, constituencies once thought to belong to Hillary. It's like watching an arm-wrestling contest where one of the participants, serenely on top, seems to use no effort, while the other, knuckles only an inch or two from the table, grimaces and hangs on grimly. If I were a superdelegate I'd already have concluded that Obamamania is likely to overwhelm John McCain and put a Democrat in the White House, while Hillary will have a harder time beating the wild card Republican. America seems to want to leave the past behind and raise its sights to some distant horizon - a mood that's put Obama where he is now. My vote would be for him, and this week may seal things as more and more people come to the same conclusion, and he amasses an unassailable lead in pledged delegates.
And yet. I've been so wrong so often about this contest - and I'm not the only one - that I'm not going to call Obama the winner yet. What if Hillary did manage to win Ohio and Texas? Even narrowly? That might change it all, all over again.
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