She's Not Dead Yet

"The new voice was angrier, sharper and far more negative toward Obama -- a voice that at one point bellowed at her rival, 'Shame on you,' as she pushed back against what she said was an unfair attack."

Don't underestimate the role of the media, says the Boston Globe:

"Barack Obama woke up yesterday morning with hopes of vanquishing his last remaining rival and claiming the Democratic presidential nomination. He ended the day with two stubborn opponents: Hillary Clinton -- vowing to continue her campaign after victories in Texas, Rhode Island, and Ohio -- and a long-delayed but growing media backlash against his candidacy.

"The second one may be more threatening than the first."

But it's ultimately about the math, says the Washington Times: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's relentless attacks on Sen. Barack Obama exposed his weaknesses and helped her regain support among her core voters in last night's contests, but did not deliver the decisive margins that several Democratic superdelegates said they were looking for to keep her candidacy alive."

What exactly did Hillary win? "Hillary Clinton is trying to make the story matter more than the numbers, and what she won Tuesday were some good talking points for her narrative," says John Dickerson. "She's got to make the case to the roughly 500 undecided superdelegates that they should overlook Obama's advantage among pledged delegates. Her argument has two parts: Obama doesn't represent the Democratic Party, and he is a flawed general election candidate.

"How is Obama a flawed Democrat? He can't win big states, her aides will argue. Clinton has now won Ohio, Texas, New York, California, and New Jersey. Obama has only limited appeal, they will argue, whereas Clinton wins the kinds of Democrats necessary to win in big, electorally rich states. But it's not that simple. Obama won electorally crucial swing states such as Missouri, Colorado, and Wisconsin, and he's won all across the country, so his appeal isn't that limited. He also lost Texas by only a whisper."

Before the vote, Politico's Jim VandeHei and John Harris offered possible reasons for a Clinton comeback, and here's one:

"Reporters roll their eyes when Clinton or surrogates start suggesting she is the victim of sexist assumptions in political and media cultures. But the press this year may be underestimating how much those complaints ring true to many women. It could be that we are on the brink of another New Hampshire, where anecdotal evidence suggested that many women were self-consciously voting against a pundit-class story line that said the race was over and the smooth-talking man had won out over the hard-working woman."

The should-she-drop-out debate was in full swing well before yesterday's results, with Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias charging that HRC is playing for the next time around:

"I see no real way for Clinton to make up the lost delegate lead, but at this point it does seem to me that she and her campaign staff are probably egomaniacal enough that if they pull out a narrow 'win' they'll keep running anyway hoping for lightning to strike and seeing the damage it'll do to the party as a feature, rather than a bug, since a crippled Obama who loses to John McCain could set them up for another run in 2012."

That drew a sharp reaction from Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Holy cats. This is entering Andrew Sullivan territory. It's also almost certainly wrong on an analytical basis since Democrats are famously hard on candidates who don't win their first time around. Name the last time that a Democratic primary loser came back to win a subsequent Democratic primary without being vice president in between. You have to go back 80 years. Hillary Clinton knows perfectly well that this is her only shot at the presidency. That's why she's fighting so hard."