It's Not Over Yet

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As the pace of the campaign slows considerably, Obama's aides say, that will play in favor of a candidate who is gaining strength against a far more established front runner. The next round of primaries in particular will be on friendly territory for Obama. He is expected, for instance, to sweep the Beltway cluster of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, which has a large number of upscale Democrats and African Americans.

And he goes forward with a growing financial advantage, having raised $32 million in January, largely from small donors who can be tapped again. That fund-raising haul was better than twice the $13.5 million that Clinton took in over the same period. If anything, the Super Tuesday results, coupled with additional wins in coming weeks, are likely to bring in an even bigger flood of contributions to Obama, whose Internet-fueled coffers were already flush enough to buy Super Bowl advertising in the post-Super Tuesday primary states.

The Clinton operation, on the other hand, is showing signs of financial stress — something that would have seemed inconceivable months ago. The day after the primary, the campaign announced that Clinton had loaned her campaign $5 million late last month, a move that spokesman Howard Wolfson said "illustrates Senator Clinton's commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation." Clinton has relied most heavily on the party's traditional big donors and is finding fewer and fewer who have not already given the maximum legal limit of $2,300 for the primary race. "They've got to produce something out of these next nine states [that vote between Super Tuesday and March 4], or they are going to have some serious money troubles," says Obama adviser Steve Hildebrand.

Clinton is counting on recouping whatever ground she loses over the next few weeks in early March, when Ohio and Texas hold their primaries. Ohio is in economic distress and has large numbers of downscale Democrats. Clinton also expects to draw upon institutional support from organized labor. And the high proportion of Latino voters in Texas, her strategists say, will give her an edge. Obama, however, contends that he is making inroads with that group of voters as well, noting that he won more than 44% of Hispanic votes in Arizona. "As Latino voters get to know me," he said the morning after the election, "we do better."

If the race continues to be close after Texas and Ohio, the last big contest — Pennsylvania's April 22 primary — may be the decisive one.

Or maybe not, which leaves only one other means of avoiding a vicious floor fight at August's Democratic National Convention in Denver. In the past few weeks, the Clinton and Obama campaigns have both stepped up their courtship, cajoling and sometimes arm-twisting of super-delegates. These are the roughly 800 party insiders — including elected officials, national-committee members and state chairmen — who get to vote at the convention by virtue of the positions they hold.

The super-delegates were created by the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 1980 election for just this sort of eventuality. But the campaign for their support is a frustrating exercise for both candidates. Any commitments they manage to secure are etched in talcum powder; super-delegates don't have to make a choice until the convention, and they can change their mind an endless number of times between now and then.

The Clinton campaign boasts that it maintains a super-delegate advantage over Obama of about 100 votes. However, Obama campaign manager Plouffe insisted in an election-night conference call with reporters that his team had whittled her lead among these party insiders to about 55. But these two campaigns should know by now: this is one year when it's dangerous to count on anything.