The Morning After

Last night's Indiana contest was a bit of a rollercoaster and at the end of it pundits on the left and the right loudly declared that Clinton's campaign was over. She disagrees.

“This candidacy and this campaign continue on,” Howard Wolfson, the communications director for Sen. Clinton, told CNN on Wednesday morning. “We do have to do well in the remaining contests,” he acknowledged, describing West Virginia, where she is expected to win as handily as she did in neighboring Ohio and Pennsylvania, as “a critically important swing state.”

Heh. Last week, Wolfson called Indiana a critical turning point for Clinton, but no matter how much Wolfson spins, Indiana did not help her. Morale and money is low at Clinton HQ. Obama has an overwhelming fundraising lead, one she can't make up even by giving herself $6.4M. She's searching for untapped donors, but coming up empty.

Aside from her morale and money problems, she's lost all control of the press. A wave of rumors was started last night when Tim Russert announced that Clinton had cancelled her morning show appearances today. In a cross-network game of telephone, that was warped into claims that she was cancelling all her Wednesday appearances. This morning, the Baltimore Sun took it one step further and claimed that she cancelled her morning appearances and returned to Washington, pointed-tail between her legs.

Clinton passed up appearances on the network morning shows today and returned to Washington with no public events on her schedule. There was inevitable speculation about whether her candidacy was nearing an end, but her campaign announced that she would fly to West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon for rallies tomorrow.

In fact, she's in West Virginia already and will be tomorrow, too. She changed her schedule last night after "Turning Point" Indiana. It is Obama who is taking the day off from campaigning to get some work done in Washington.

More: Like rats from a sinking ship.

Former Sen. George McGovern, an early supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race and endorsed her rival, Barack Obama.

After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern said Wednesday it's virtually impossible for Clinton to win the nomination. The 1972 Democratic presidential nominee said he had a call in to former President Clinton to tell him of the decision, adding that he remains close friends with the Clintons.

Rumor has it that a slate of undeclared, but Obama-supporting, superdelgates will announce their support today and the next few days.

Video Bye-Bye [Ace]:

Is that all there is to the circus? Is that all there is?

Creepy and off-kilter, like Her Majesty.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 12:19 PM

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