These guys still think Hillary Clinton's going to win the nomination, and they might be right. I'm not entirely convinced. To their credit, they both see it being a very narrow victory, which is possible. Hillary had her chance to knock Obama out of the race on Super Tuesday, and she couldn't. The race will never have conditions as favorable to her as it did on Super Tuesday. I just don't see another game-changing moment coming for Hillary--she's thrown everything she could at Obama, from Rezko to drug use, and he's only gotten stronger.
Matt's thesis seems to be that a press backlash against Obama, coupled with an odd Clinton win before the Ohio and Texas primaries, will ensure that she wins those and thus gets the nomination. I think a couple of assumptions are made here that aren't really warranted. Sure, we've seen some scattered articles on how the press is afraid of Obama's "messianistic" fan club, but that isn't necessarily a sign that the press is going to start treating him like Mitt Romney. This kind of thinking reminds me of how some pundits used to wonder aloud about whether the press would turn on John McCain after a single critical article of the man. Anything's possible, but John McCain is the token conservative that the media loves. And they might well decide to turn on Obama, but I'm not sure there's enough data at this point to support that thesis.
In any event, Clinton might win Texas, but I think Obama will in Ohio. He's done very well in the Midwest so far, and he'll have plenty of time to soften up the ground for a little retail politics. Texas will present a much greater challenge, admittedly, and it will be a test of Latino outreach. If he can win there, he wins it all, I think. I'm not sure that a single win will turn the whole game around, though--if Obama manages to put a bunch of victories together this month--say sweeping the contests this weekend, then the DC-area contests on Tuesday, then Wisconsin and Hawaii the week after--will Hillary start to recede into the background? As we saw with Rudy Giuliani's campaign, without the odd victory here and there, it's very difficult to get people to remember your name.
Matt is right to say that Hillary Clinton still does have a committed and large fanbase. However, at this point, it does not seem that they make up the bulk of the Democratic Party, as Obama has led in a couple of the new national polls. And I think Kevin's caveat is pretty likely to come to pass: if it eventually becomes clear that Obama will come out of the primaries with a victory with pledged delegates, you will probably begin to see a lot of pressure from party leaders for Hillary to exit for the sake of party unity. Whether she cares about party unity is an open question, but there will be defections if she doesn't drop out in this circumstance, which I do believe is likely to come to pass. And while the Clintons seem to be talented at trench warfare, as Kevin asserts, hasn't Obama shown some chops there as well? He excels at the back-and-forth and retail politics. Clinton does better with wholesale. And her base actually seems to be shrinking--she doesn't even hold her own against Obama with White folks anymore--it's basically just White women and Latinos at this point. Now, what she's got there is pretty damn near impregnable, but I'd say Obama has got some talents for this sort of game.
I still think Barack can win, and I think he can beat John McCain. Some Democrats might bemoan John McCain winning the nomination, but I don't. McCain is in a unique position in which he can stand up for the Bush worldview in its entirety while still claiming to be a war critic. He can pull off both continuity and change messages, in other words. Putting Hillary against McCain isn't going to work because of this--the two aren't as far apart on foreign policy as one might think, at least as far as their worldview seems to be concerned. A tie goes to the beloved straight-talker, in my estimation. Obama, on the other hand, has shown the willingness and the ability to engage that worldview and propose something different. Plus, the polls say he's more electable. So, it just makes sense to pick him. And as for those people who are worried about his political skills, let's not forget that if he pulls this off, he will have won the Democratic nomination for President by defeating Hillary Clinton! She had more advantages than most non-incumbents could ever have. I'd say he's got the acumen, and Hillary Clinton is actually pretty good on the attack, whereas one needs only recall McCain's Janet Reno joke to see what he's capable of in that department. John McCain is actually a very overrated politician--he is a terrible speaker, foot-in-mouth disease, so-so debater, messy personal history, not to mention his age, temper, and health.
