For Clinton, A Lively Dead Heat

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Washington Sketch

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank teams with washingtonpost.com's Akira Hakuta to provide a behind-the-scenes look at government proceedings in Washington.

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The Clinton campaign struck first with a conference call for reporters with strategists Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson. "There are going to be lots of different ways you can look at this and decide who a winner is and who a loser is," Wolfson proposed.

Not surprisingly, Wolfson had some suggestions. "If Senator Obama doesn't win Massachusetts, I think that would have to be a significant disappointment," he spun.

Obama, for his part, tried to set expectations in his favor. Casting his ballot in Chicago, he said that "Senator Clinton is the favorite -- she was up 20 or 30 points in a lot of the states."

Both campaigns had roughly the same expectations as they awaited the closing of the polls: deadlock. Wolfson forecast that last night's voting would be "inconclusive," a point he repeated several times until Copley News Service's George Condon informed him that "four times you said that tonight will be inconclusive."

The exit polls, coming in after 5 p.m., appeared to confirm that view, showing many razor-thin contests. "At the end of the night it's going to be pretty close to a dead heat," CNN's Jack Cafferty declared on the televisions playing in the ballroom where the Clinton celebration was to occur.

The Clinton campaign at 7:30 e-mailed "Super Tuesday Talking Points." Among them: "To be sure, both campaigns have a long night ahead of them -- but we feel very good about the numbers that we're seeing."

That remained the company line until sometime after 9 p.m., when the Massachusetts and New Jersey victories came on top of Clinton's wins in New York, Arkansas, Tennessee and Oklahoma. "UPSET OF THE NIGHT -- MASSACHUSETTS FOR CLINTON," blared a new set of talking points. The music pumped into the ballroom and the surrogates swung into action. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey stood on a chair, giving an interview to a local TV station, waving a thumbs up. A flock of members of Congress worked the microphones.

Off in a corner, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York worked a calculator with aides, trying to figure the delegate count. He still wasn't convinced Clinton would score a major win in delegates, but that was only part of the battle. "This gives us momentum," he said. "It confounds expectations."

Out on the ballroom floor, adviser Hattaway was celebrating Clinton's triumph over the low expectations he helped to set. "I held out a kernel of hope that it would be like that," he said.