Famous last words?

Last night, I went to a big rally in Concord here in New Hampshire. Gossiping with a few journalists, I heard the best put-down of the campaign so far. The scene was the campaign bus of one of the candidates, a day or two after Iowa. (You’ll have to guess which candidate, and, indeed, which party the bus belonged to.) The candidate was gossiping with one of his senior strategists about the state of the Clinton campaign. A journalist asked if she still had a shot. “You know what?” shot back the strategist. “You got to understand this one thing. Hillary is now, officially, the Sixth Sense candidate.” He pauses, for effect. “She is totally dead… she just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

Will the unnamed strategist live to eat his, or her, words? The result this evening will have a big say. If Obama wins by more than eight percentage points, expect the press to make his nominee presumptive, and to assume that, barring “events,” he is then unstoppable.