Below The Beltway

With last night’s victories by Hillary Clinton, any chance that the Democratic race for the White House would be over anytime soon has gone by the wayside. At the very least, this thing will go on until at least until Pennsylvania on April 22nd and perhaps beyond that, and there are challenges ahead for both candidates.

For Hillary Clinton, the challenge will be to make a convincing case that there’s real momentum despite the fact that she continues to lag in the delegate count:

Critical to Clinton’s prospect of victory are the superdelegates, the nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who can vote any way they choose. Her campaign envisions what aides call a “buyer’s remorse” strategy of raising enough doubts about the first-term senator from Illinois through increasingly vigorous attacks and tougher media scrutiny to convince the superdelegates that it would be too risky to nominate him.

That reflects the recognition that it would be enormously difficult for Clinton to overtake Obama in the pledged delegates chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses. By some calculations, Clinton would need to win more than 60 percent of the vote in the dozen contests remaining between now and June 7 to catch Obama in pledged delegates — a steep challenge given that, so far, she has won that much in only one state, her onetime adopted home of Arkansas. Even in New York, where she is a sitting senator, she won 57 percent of the vote. She won 55 percent in Michigan, where Obama was not even on the ballot.

“Her durability is impressive if not astonishing, but she is still looking at some pretty cold, hard numbers in the race,” said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist who initially ran the 2004 primary campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). “She’s running out of time, she’s running out of space.” He described a Clinton nomination even with wins in Texas and Ohio as “impossible, really.”

Steve McMahon, another Democratic strategist who is not working for either candidate, said the odds are long. “It’s difficult to see how the math works for Senator Clinton,” he said. “If you look at most models out there circulating, the one thing that’s consistent is that she has to perform pretty strongly in order to have any hope of making up the deficit among elected delegates.”

Clinton’s problem, though, is that she is going to have a difficult time convincing superdelegates to back her if she continues to trail in both pledged delegates and the total popular vote. The days when the party bosses, which is essentially what superdelegates are, could easily go against the popular will are, I think long gone.

Barack Obama’s problem, meanwhile, is that he’s going to have to continue fighting a two-front war:

With losses in three out of four primaries yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his campaign face a scenario that a barrage of advertising, phone calls and door-knocking could not avert — a protracted, two-front war against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain

Even before the polls opened, campaign officials were dreading an outcome that would keep Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the race at least through the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Those seven weeks will cost Obama at least $10 million, and possibly much more, campaign aides say, as he battles a rejuvenated Clinton who will have every incentive to try to force him into a major mistake.

Obama aides also expect to take concentrated fire from McCain (Ariz.) and his Republican allies, who have already begun raising questions about the 46-year-old Democratic senator’s credibility, authenticity and even his patriotism.

And, as I noted yesterday, the media is no longer giving Obama a free pass. With fire coming from all three sides, one wonders how Obama is going to handle it all:

Obama aides stressed that the campaign will not be drawn into a fight for Pennsylvania on Clinton’s terms: an expensive, all-out battle focused on her. Instead, the campaign’s main target will be McCain — a point underscored by Obama when he declared himself “ready to start a great debate about the future of the country with a man who loves his country and served it bravely.”

But Democratic leaders outside the campaign are worried that a candidate who cruised through his only Senate campaign, in 2004, does not know what is about to hit him. Republicans are already planting the seeds for a negative campaign designed to make one overarching point, said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama supporter and informal adviser: This man is not who you think he is.

“You have to question whether he is equipped to deal with the complex and serious issues that are facing the nation,” said Danny Diaz, the Republican National Committee’s communications director.

Consciously or not, of course, the Republicans would be helping Hillary by going after Obama in this manner. But then there are those in the GOP who seem to think that Hillary would be easier to beat; they may be right, but, frankly, I wouldn’t take the risk.