By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2008

After weeks of when-will-she-drop-out chatter, some journalists were anxiously awaiting Tuesday's showdown in Ohio and Texas as a chance to bid farewell to Hillary Clinton and return to something resembling normal life.

"This was it, finally," National Review columnist Jim Geraghty recalls thinking. "She's going to crack open like a pi¿ata and we'll all get to celebrate and take some time off."

But in a rerun of a very familiar movie, the media establishment was too quick to crank out the obituaries for a former first lady who keeps bouncing back against Barack Obama.

"I have an irrational hatred of Ohio," says a weary Ana Marie Cox, the Time reporter and blogger, reached while shopping for a vitamin booster at Trader Joe's. "They didn't do anything but prolong the agony.

"Of course it's historic, it's amazing, I feel lucky to be covering it. But how many more stories do I have to read, or be forced to write, about when Hillary will drop out?"

This is hardly the first time that press prognosticators have forecast a Clinton exit. After her third-place finish in Iowa, many predicted that Clinton would lose New Hampshire and be forced to withdraw. With the approach of early February's Super Tuesday -- the day everyone just knew would settle the race -- Clinton's slippage in key state polls prompted suggestions that the end was near. And after Clinton lost 10 straight states to Obama in the past month, much of the media either feasted on tales of discord in her campaign or ignored her in sizing up a fall confrontation between Obama and John McCain.

"The surest sign she's coming back is when we all say she's going over a cliff," says Slate writer John Dickerson, who wrote a piece headlined "The Conventional Wisdom Says Clinton Is Doomed. Don't Believe It" back on Feb. 11.

While some commentators are not exactly Hillary fans or have been dazzled by Obama, most say the race is now simply a matter of math -- that Clinton, after getting blown out in states from South Carolina to Wisconsin, faces an insurmountable gap in pledged delegates. "I don't think it's only because of what her supporters see as Hillary-bashing," Dickerson says. "All the sniping between her aides is a telltale sign of a campaign in distress. We're not making this up."

Many voters have tuned in only recently, but campaign reporters and analysts have been on the beat since before Clinton and Obama kicked off their candidacies back in January 2007. They originally had to chase 18 presidential candidates, and by now have covered or commented on 20 Democratic debates.

"Everyone is toasted," says NBC anchor Brian Williams, "but they just keep waking up the next morning and doing it again." Sometimes, as the correspondents and pundits ricochet from late-night coverage to early-morning duty, the fatigue starts to show.

Gene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, says he felt "a little punchy" after holding forth as an MSNBC analyst from 5:40 p.m. until 2 a.m. yesterday, fueled only by bad election-night food. "The last hour you're on," he says, "you just kind of say something and you're running the loop back in your head: 'What did I say? Did it make much sense?' It was either deeply profound or nonsensical."

Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron says he spent part of 42 weeks on the road last year.

"I'm a sick junkie," says Cameron, reached after flying back from Texas but before boarding an evening flight to cover McCain in Florida. "Here's something pathetic. . . . It's kind of hard to reenter the real world. You're used to living out of a suitcase. When you come home and see a five-pound stack of mail, it can be intimidating. It's easier to run away to the road."

On the seemingly endless road trips, reporters and campaign aides commiserate about the lack of clean clothes and missing children's birthdays. One journalistic joke was that Tuesday's results were like Groundhog Day -- "if Hillary didn't see the shadow of defeat, we'd have six more weeks of campaigning," as Geraghty put it. The next big contest, Pennsylvania, is April 22. But could the race drag on until the previously obscure Puerto Rico primary on June 7? Or even later, if Florida and Michigan, whose delegates aren't being counted because the states flouted party rules, get to vote again?

Obama's losses followed a week in which journalists -- some of whom may have been embarrassed by the "Saturday Night Live" skits portraying them as swooning over the Illinois senator -- gave him rough treatment for the first time in this campaign. Obama even grumbled to reporters: "This whole spin of how the press has just been so tough on them and not tough on us, I didn't expect that you guys would bite on that."

But the Obama-is-inevitable spin proved as ephemeral as last year's near-coronation of Clinton. In an era of erratic polls, Cameron says, "we should listen to the voters instead of listening to ourselves offer up hollowed-out, burned-out punditry that just doesn't apply anymore."

The sheer length of the contest has led to a role reversal. "Usually the press overplays comeback stories so they can keep the race alive," Cox says. "This is a really strange phenomenon in that you're seeing people who can't wait for it to be over. There's only so many stories you can write, and we're running out of them."

If some are sick of the campaign, others are just sick. Dickerson was forced off the road after a nasty cold and constant flying led to a burst eardrum. But he says he remained fixated because the story line keeps changing and mutating.

"I could also be a geek," Dickerson says. "My family would certainly feel that way."