Skate, But Keep Your Head Up, Obama ...

If you are a Hillary Clinton supporter, this morning is confetti and streamers ... Not quite Lake Placid 1980, but your spirits will be buoyed by the determination to march forward and claim the gold she believes has been hers all along ...

If you are a Barack Obama supporter this morning, it's the soirée or dinner party, where you're getting another stalling round of salad and breadsticks (good, tasty salad and breadsticks, but ...), waiting for the main course, the aroma of its juices presenting a most appetizing and tantalizing treat, that is said to be coming "any minute now".

There's a Punxsutawney Phil joke in here somewhere, but for a high percentage of the country, that quickly turns into gleeful thoughts about obliterating Gobbler's Knob.

As you read articles today, that speak to the high negatives of the voting, and the campaign, most, if not all, are being polite, not spelling out, or only scratching the surface, as to what those negatives are.

Andrew Sullivan speaks openly about them;

It's worth recalling what this primary came to be about, because of a self-conscious decision by the Clintons to adopt the tactics and politics of the people who persecuted and hounded them in the 1990s. It was indeed in the end about smearing and labeling Obama as a far-left, atheist, elite, pansy Godless snob fraud. That was almost all it came to be about. It was the Clintons' core message and core belief ...

...Tthe Rove-Atwater gambits have been paid the highest compliment by the Clintons these past few weeks. But a single digit win against a young black man in a polarized race suggests that this compliment was past its sell-by date.

There's another core belief the Clintons have.

That this nomination is supposed to be Hillary's and why doesn't everyone else see that? Why is anyone (and most of all, Barack Obama) challenging this?

They are beside themselves in shock and anger and a self-delusional "Why is this happening to me?" kind of thing, and this is what feeds and norishes her campaign theses days.

With the PA win, and her Kitchen Sink Strategy, it's quite possible that today, those dwindling Clinton Campaign funds are being dropped in every hardware and big-box store, from Indiana to North Carolina, buying more sinks, and maybe, placing some calls to Moen and Kohler, about a product-placement opportunity.

She had a good deal in PA to double-down and go DefCon 5 on the nasty, smearing, Rovian tactics.

It was her "Home" state (Isn't this getting to be like a Bush-thing, as to where she actually is from, or lives?) and she had the blessing of the State Machine, in a state where such old-school political machines still exist.

Even the NYT, which endorsed Hillary, came out with an editorial today (put on-line last evening), "The Low Road to Victory", criticizing Hillary, saying;

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

(Will Bunch, of Attytood: Read the whole thing -- it's not an unendorsement, but it's close.)

As was dwelt on last evening, over-and-over, over-and-over (On CNN,, they had a stadium-sized Jumbotron to crunch theirs) the numbers from here-on-out, don't add up for Hillary, barring an unprecedented meltdown by Obama, or, perhaps The Second Coming, which, could also, for some, have Elvis strolling back into the building and endorsing Hillary.

So, while reloading her sinks this morning, no doubt Hillary smells the Superdelegates getting ready to snuff her out.

With the early odds (there's those numbers again, over-and-over, over-and-over) saying North Carolina is shaping up for a big Obama win, and Indiana up-for-grabs, though, with a possible slant to Hillary, it will be KitchenSink-O-Rama for another two-weeks.

Don't be surprised, especially in North Carolina, if ugly rumors gets floated that Obama fathered a white child, though I suspect John McCain, and the Republicans, have called dibs on that one, for the general election.

Or, to stay with one of the opening references, and since the Stanley Cup Playoffs are on, it's the third period of a hockey game, with Team Obama winning, and Team Clinton knowing they can't.

So now comes the hard, sometimes illegal, cross-and-body checks, the cheap shots, the facewashes, the pitchfork hits, the stick-in-the-skates ... Anything to rough up and beat down the opponent ... The "If-we-can't-win-the-game, we'll-win-the-fight" mentality ...

While fights always make the nightly highlights, watching this particular garbage time continue is getting tiresome.

The score is stagnant, so that it's going to be up to the referees - the Superdelegates, in this case - to make the call and declare "Winner, Game Over".

Blow the whistle, will ya!

In the meantime, for Barack Obama, simple advise today ...

Skate, and skate hard, but keep your head up ...


Pennsylvania Polka Riffs

McClatchy Newspapers: Clinton's win in Pa. leaves Obama battered, party reeling

Barry Crimmins: Scorched Earth Day

Josh Marshall: Status Quo Ante

dday: Friedman Units, Election-Style

Matthew Yglesias: Save Us!

The Hillary Deathwatch

Hillary's Smelling Burning Rubber! Or: The Garlic Was Right - Hillary Has Built Her "Field of Voices"

Hillary's New Campaign Slogan: Keep Hopelessness Alive! ... The Results - The Garlic's Weekly Poll