The Road Ahead

More Hillary's more traditional path to the nomination:

My bottom line take: The turf looks fairly favorable to Clinton, provided she wins Ohio and Texas March 4. [And if she manages to win Wisconsin, something Barone admits is "optimistic" early on. -- amc] Not favorable enough, perhaps, for her to overtake Obama in "pledged" delegates, but enough to keep the overall delegate count excruciatingly close, unless the superdelegates start cascading to Obama. (Maybe they have: Congressman John Lewis has evidently switched.) But if Clinton loses either Ohio or Texas, that's a sign that the ground thereafter will be less favorable to her. Losing Ohio would suggest she can't carry Pennsylvania or Indiana. Losing Texas suggests she can't carry Mississippi, North Carolina, West Virginia, or Kentucky. Losing either probably means the superdelegate cascade starts in torrents, and she falls well behind in total delegate count. In which case her candidacy is probably effectively over.