Meh-mentum or Barack In A Hard Place?

TUESDAY NIGHT: I’ve been sitting here for the last hour watching Hillary’s lead teeter between eight and ten percent wondering which headline to go with, and I’m still not sure.

There’s no real surprise, there’s no real change in her prospects, and there’s no getting rid of her now. She nailed just enough of a win to saddle us with her all the way to Denver.

The Associated Press headline for Wednesday was anything but positive or an endorsement for a newly-attained momentum for the Clinton campaign. “Hillary Clinton survived another day. There will be little time for celebration, though, as time and money are running out.”

Indeed. They’re sending Blackberry messages to would-be supporters asking them to pony up even $5 for a campaign that’s having trouble keeping the lights on compared to the thundering money train that is still the Obama Campaign. She did pull in nearly $3 million after the race was declared for her, which should be enough to pay Geoff Garin’s salary and rent them all a van to sleep in when they travel through Indiana. NBC’s Chuck Todd propounded a theory from a professor that Pennsylvania will do to Hillary what Ronald Reagan did to the Soviets: To make her spend so much defending herself in Pennsylvania, she’s essentially destroyed herself, and to Obama go the spoils.

Tom Brokaw pointed out that 41% of the electorate finds Hillary untrustworthy, and counted that as a negative. I’m surprised it’s that low.

Howard Fineman kept mentioning “The Deer Hunter Vote” that went for Hillary. I think I may have gone for different imagery, because I sat here thinking of men in red bandannas throwing down their absentee ballots for Hillary Clinton before shooting themselves in the head. She’s got the potential for a hot campaign slogan there, though: “Hillary. Máu!, more than ever.”

Ten points isn’t what Obama needed tonight. Hillary isn’t going anywhere and some people are actually going to start giving her money for food and oxygen that her campaign so desperately needs. Four points or less and her campaign would have died a lonely but merciful death over the next few weeks. As a fan of a good dogfight, I couldn’t be happier. As someone who isn’t sure I want John McCain running the military and nominating up to three Supreme Court Justices over the next four years, I’m not sure I’m all that thrilled.

Hell and Maria, who ever thought Guam would still be on the radar at this point? But it’s eight delegates, and that’s money in the bank, baby. This is Guam’s moment to matter–did you know that Guam’s main exports are mostly transshipments of refined petroleum products; construction materials, fish, food and beverage products? I didn’t, and I wouldn’t have cared if they didn’t have a primary with eight delegates at stake coming up. You can bet Governor Felix Camacho’s phone isn’t idle right now.

Pat Buchanan was very near having his penis out to urinate on Obama’s grave tonight. “He got clobbered! He got clobbered worse than Michael Dukakis lost the Presidency!” I called bullshit on that at first, but oddly enough, he was right. The 1988 popular vote margin was 53.4% for Bush to 45.6% for Dukakis. Who knew? I watched that election and I thought it was worse than that. I remember Dukakis crawling into that Wednesday on bloody stumps, and it was only 7.8% in the popular vote? Wow.

Chuck Todd called Oregon “the ultimate firewall” for Obama tonight. If memory serves, I don’t think Oregon has mattered in a primary since Eugene McCarthy won here in 1968. If you’re the drinking game sort, come May 6 in the leadup and May 20 during the actual primary, take a drink every time one of these effete Northeasterners or Southwestern Governors calls us “Oruh-gone” (I’m looking at you, Bill Richardson). This will be the most press we’ve gotten since the Tonya Harding attack on Nancy Kerrigan, the Kip Kinkel school shooting, or Bob Packwood being driven from office for sexually harassing his female visitors and secretaries.

That kind of carma doesn’t bode well for either candidate.

What does this all mean? It means we’ll have Hillary Clinton to kick around for another six or eight or twelve or sixteen weeks. It means that John McCain gets another six or eight or twelve or sixteen weeks of free press while Hillary and Obama claws one another’s eyes out and Howard Dean yells and waves his arms and admonishes them to break it up.  In other words, they’re going to be breaking a lot of eggs to make this Denver omelette.