Obama is clearly leading in precisely two Super Tuesday states--Georgia and his home state of Illinois. He has a slight lead in Idaho within the margin of error. Otherwise, he trails Clinton by at least 7 points and in most cases by double digits (25 points in NY, 15 in California, 12 in Missouri, etc.). How in the world is he going to turn that around--speaking realistically here, not out of blind faith--in 9 days? His main chance was to ride his Iowa surge to victory in New Hampshire, which would have changed the national dynamic, but Clinton's surprise victory there put a stop to that. Now it is a state-by-state battle, with supporters of each candidate dug in.

There is one Democratic debate scheduled before Super Tuesday, in LA on I think January 31. There's only so much work you can do on the ground between now and then. Only TV and radio ads can have a real effect in reaching a lot of voters, especially undecideds. But is Obama now going to start running a series of anti-Clinton ads targeted for individual states? That's his only hope, in my view--but it will certainly drag down even further the tenor of his oh-so-noble campaign. (Unless, of course, the national media continues not to call him on it --as with his slimy Spanish-language ad in Nevada, which actually probably backfired with Latino voters, who know a desperate pander when they hear one.)

He also has to figure out how to cut into Clinton's support among key Democratic constituencies--older voters, women voters, Latino voters, working-class voters, all of whom he lost substantially in New Hampshire and Nevada. Otherwise, he's destined to be just another boutique candidate--the black/affluent/youth voters' candidate--who pulls maybe 25-35 in each state but loses them all. A cross between Jesse Jackson and Gary Hart, if you will.

A lot will be decided on February 5, much more decisively than anything was decided last evening. I don't think the Obamabots posting on this site are going to like the results. But they have always viewed their candidate (and, probably, the world) through fantasy glasses, so it will take a cold hard dose of reality to truly reach them.

Finally, to repeat, because everyone here reads things through their Obama-filter: I am an Edwards supporter. I also can see, realistically, that he has no chance, and probably won't secure 15% of the vote in any state above the Mason-Dixon line. Unless, that is, Clinton and Obama continue to act like children and he can push his "adult wing of the Democratic party" message more aggressively.

Fine, who cares. It was an anti-Clinton ad designed to help Obama. If Hillary is responsible for every word that comes out of Bill's mouth, then Obama can take the rap for that. Of course, not with those of you who believe he is a saint. (And, of course, there was NO coordination between Obama's campaign and the Culinary Workers' Union, as we all know.)

I love how you respond to the overall post by nit-picking. Can you lay out a strategy that gets Obama wins in even a third of the Super Tuesday states...? I'm still waiting.

avoidiing the reality you're facing, Anonymous. I didn't expect anything else from you Obamabots. Still waiting for some knowledge on how your candidate pulls out big wins on Super Tuesday. Other than just the glory of his ineffable loveliness suddenly dawning on rank-and-file Democrats. Any ideas...? Really, any at all...?

Just as slimy as Obama and the CWU. So what? Stop whining. Talk Super Tuesday STRATEGY. Do you have one? Thought not.

If this thread is representative of your campaign's level of strategic planning (or lack of it), you're gonna need all the luck you can get. I'm heading out to Australia for a week so will miss the fun of this campaign--but will be back just in time for Super Tuesday, to see if your brilliant strategy has borne fruit (or, more likely, to have the pleasure of dancing on your candidate's political grave).

This is just short-term jockeying by the Clinton folks to win a news cycle and push the South Carolina results off the board. The fact is that Super Tuesday will still decide the nomination. If Clinton wins, say, 19 of the 22 states being contested, she's the nominee. The delegate issue is irrelevant.

There is no way that the Democratic Party would permit a situation where the candidate who won, say, 40 of the primaries and caucuses going into the convention, but didn't perhaps yet have sufficient delegates to sew up the nomination, would not in fact *get* the nomination. It's pure fantasy to imagine that Obama, maybe in cohoots with Edwards, could somehow wheel and deal, turn a few superdelegates, and wind up the nominee though he won only 1 of 6 states contested in the primaries.

The Democrats are not the Republicans--that's the way Bush and his minions gamed the system to win the Presidency in 2000. They didn't care if it thwarted the will of the majority--the end justified the means. Won't happen for us Dems. Which means Obama has to figure out some way to win at least one-third to one-half of the Super Tuesday states outright or the handwriting will be on the wall for him.

Look at it this way. If Clinton wins (as polls now suggest) 18 or 19 of the Super Tuesday states, all the headlines the next day will read: Clinton swamps Obama, etc. Dem voters waiting to vote in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, and elsewhere will look at those results and think, well, I guess this is over. They're not going to care about spinning and parsing in terms of delegate totals and a potentially brokered convention. Obama's poll numbers in all the post-Super Tuesday states will start sinking like a stone if he can't pull out some big, unexpected wins on February 5.

Of course, he still might. But the fact is he HAS to.