Mark Penn explains it all

OK, so I've been trawling RealClearPolitics. Sue me.

Here's Clinton's Chief Strategist explaining the path to power.

If I understand it right, Hillary needs to lose more states in order to emulate Walter Mondale(!) or Jimmy Carter(!).

As a well written exercise in bullshit, it's hard to beat.

Zugzwang for Clinton

RealClearPolitics has the graphic.



I said some time ago, Senator Obama has the vibe of a winner.

In a well executed positional attack, there may come a point where the defender is so constrained in terms of having limited possible moves that every move she makes, weakens her position. It's called Zugzwang and was a particular specialty of Aron Nimzowitch.

Here's a classic example from chess: Fritz Saemisch - Aaron Nimzowitsch, Copenhagen 1923.

And here's one from the current election cycle: the order, distribution and timing of the remaining primaries and caucuses is almost designed to produce an Obama nomination victory.

Via Drudge: SHE CAN'T CATCH US!

Final thought comes to me from Frank Rich's New York Times column:

The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.

By contrast:

A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to “who knows how many” Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the “Yes We Can” Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)

Not spend more, but spend smart.

I'll take that as a "No"

From ABC News:

Asked whether he intends to run for the Senate, [Mike] Huckabee said he would sooner dye his hair green, tattoo himself and go on a "rock tour with Amy Winehouse," reports ABC News' Kevin Chupka.