If there is one single strategy in this election cycle that has shown an unusual penchant for failure, it is the Firewall Strategy.  The firewall failed both Fred Thompson and John Edwards in South Carolina.  The firewall failed Rudy Giuliani in Florida.  The firewall failed Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday.  The firewall has been one of the most prominent and oft-discussed features of this dramatic and unusual election year.

Indeed, no presidential candidate has seen as many Alamo-like last stands than Hillary Clinton, who now must fall back once again, this time to voters in Texas and Ohio—where primaries are held on March 4—to do her bidding and to stop the brushfire that has become the Barack Obama campaign. Nearing the end of the night of the Potomac Primary vote results, with tallies still trickling in from Maryland (where polls stayed open an additional 90 minutes due to severe weather and a judge’s order), Obama has sealed another sweep like his Saturday victory in five states.  But this was more than just a series of wins by respectable margins.  This was a rout.

With about 99 percent of the vote counted Obama had won Virginia with 64 percent of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 35 percent.  He won Maryland by a slightly smaller spread, 61 percent to 36 percent.  And won the District of Columbia, considered only a year ago solid territory for Hillary Clinton, by a staggering 75%.  Clinton won only in the most rural areas of western Virginia and a few pockets in Maryland.

Added to his wins on Saturday, February 9 in Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Maine and Washington, this brings Obama a total of eight straight successes, a remark-able winning streak considering the wide diversity found in these states.   
 
And with his victory in the Potomac region, Obama stripped Hillary Clinton of almost all her most reliable demographic sectors except the rural, small town vote.  For the third week in a row, Obama’s numbers among white voters has grown.  And for the first time in what has become a contentious struggle over the Hispanic vote, Obama won the majority of Latinos in Virginia, Maryland and in the District of Columbia.

But by about 10 p.m. Eastern Time came the most ominous news yet for the Clinton team: Barack Obama had now officially surpassed Hillary Clinton in the overall delegate count.  CNN gave their carefully formed estimate as 1181 delegates for Obama to 1173 for Clinton.  Other networks placed the Obama edge slightly higher.

The news was immediately greeted as proof—or so said the Obama spin doctors—of their candidate’s arrival as front runner, however close the numbers might be, and as a further indication of the momentum that seems to be flowing inexorably toward his campaign.  The Clinton campaign downplayed the importance of Virginia and Maryland, rebutted the delegate count as a transient issue, playing up instead the singular importance of Texas and Ohio as big-ticket electoral states in November.  In other words: If Hillary Clinton can win these two valuable swing states, she can win the general election, period.

So now another firewall is set in place.  And yet another stage is prepared for the next showdown.

But Senator Obama was having none of it.  Instead of taking this bait once again, he audaciously moved forward with language that made it sound as if he were already running in a general election against John McCain.  
     
Obama, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands in the cavernous coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin, drew fire from the excitement of the standing room only audience.

“The change we seek swept through the Chesapeake and across the Potomac River,” he said, “Tonight we are on our way.  And again, we have given people a reason to believe.”  Obama again returned to his most familiar and winning themes in his speech: inclusion and optimism.

In fact, Obama used the word “inclusion” along with the word “optimism” several times during the address.  He cited his wins in every kind of state, from the small states to the large states, from the east to the west to the states in the middle, from the rural areas to the suburbs to the cities, and using this litany of recent victories as the central point to this crowd (and perhaps more importantly to those watching live on CNN or Fox News) that his campaign is about reaching across boundaries and reaching past the red state blue state divide.

Obama cited a long list of the kind of things that Americans have become frustrated with: Exxon’s quarterly profit report and their all-time high earnings while millions of Americans suffer through high prices at the gas pump; a continuing dependence on foreign oil when so little is being down in North America to bring about energy independence; shrinking salaries for middle class and lower class workers while jobs continue to flow by the thousands overseas, especially to Asia; families attempting to make ends meet on Wal-Mart and convenience store wages; a higher educational system in this country growing more prohibitively expensive each semester even as Americans continue to fall behind the rest of the world in learning; a health care system out of reach of those who most need it; and “a war that should never have been waged” in Iraq.

Sensing that the GOP field has essentially turned into a one-man sprint to the finish line, Obama emphasized his potential opponent in the general election.  He called Senator John McCain an honorable man and a genuine American hero, but said that it was clear that McCain would seek to run largely on a Bush-Cheney style agenda.  “But George W. Bush will not be on the ballot in November,” Obama said, drawing rousing cheers from the packed arena.  Obama said he admired McCain for opposing the Bush tax cuts of 2002 and 2004, but said McCain is wrong now to support essentially the same types of tax cuts.

Obama also spoke warmly of the American dream as a collective, unifying concept, not something that is one person’s dream versus another person’s dream.  He invoked the memories of his own family: the grandfather who fought in General Patton’s army in the European theater of WWII and the grandmother who worked long hours assembling munitions for the Allied cause.

Thursday, February 14, 2008: The top campaign news item was Hillary Clinton’s next high stakes poker move.  With time running out, with money running thin (and with a scant few obstacles in the path of Barack Obama’s steady ascent), the Clinton team is now pushing almost their entire stack of chips to the middle of the table on two or three card plays: Ohio, Texas (which vote on March 4) and Pennsylvania (April 22).  These are the last of the mega states, with piles of delegates, and valuable bragging rights for the Democrat who wins and can reasonably say: look how I will carry these states for you in November.

Of her many last stands in this strange primary and caucus season, these big states really are her last chance…the mother of all firewalls, and her one last shot at halting what is beginning to look like a coast-to-coast brush fire for Obama.  The Clinton campaign was asking every able volunteer to take train, plane or automobile to Ohio and Pennsylvania in order to create a blanket of door-to-door activity over the next weeks.  Her ad dollars are now being spent mostly in these two states.  And her spin masters aren’t even bothering to lower expectations this time: Clinton must win (especially in the Buckeye State), and win with a hefty, convincing margin.  Another squeaker won’t do.  
  
The rumors swirling around about frustration, frayed nerves and downright fear within the Clinton camp gained some additional credibility with multiple reports from multiple insider sources: Clinton staff meetings had turned into shouting matches and ugly blame sessions.  There were more staff shake-ups, and tension was mounting as hard decisions had to be made about payroll versus ad dollars.

Even with her recent loan of $5 million of her own money to the campaign (much of that was offset by a rally in fundraising over the next few days that netted a fresh $7.5 million) cash is running precariously low to keep TV advertising in play.  In January, Obama had famously raised over $32 million in one 30-day period, the most money raised in a single month by any presidential candidate in U.S. history.  Most of that money had come in small increments (federal law limits individual contributions to $2300 per candidate) of as little as $10 and $20.

This fundraising contrast spoke volumes about the unexpected and the unseen: the Clinton campaign team had simply not prepared a strategy that included a prolonged fight for the nomination after New Hampshire.  All the first and second tier names were supposed to be knocked out by the middle of January, with the possible exception of John Edwards, who they expected to KO no later than South Carolina in his native south.  (That part of the plan worked out, but was the result more of Obama than anything the Clinton team had done.)  There had not been a contingency prepared that involved large infusions of cash past mid-January.  But, desperate to offset Obama’s gains, the Clinton team is spending scarce dollars on whatever new advertising assaults they can muster.

Clinton had barely placed her newest TV ads on the airwaves—slick 30 second spots which accuse Obama of ducking debates to avoid the hard issues—when team Obama struck back with ads of their own, saying in effect that after 18 full scale Democratic debates (more than in any previous presidential campaign cycle) the time for theater and debate had come and gone.  Obama’s ad went on to suggest that Clinton’s latest attacks and debate-baiting were just more of the same old divisive and misleading politics, the kind of ugly sand flinging and eye gouging that went on prior to South Carolina.

On the stump, Team Bill and Hillary introduced a new power phrase to their vocabulary: solutions.  The Clinton campaign is about solutions, not speeches.  At campaign stops throughout Wednesday and Thursday, both Clintons repeatedly hammered home this new theme: Barack Obama is a pleasant and inspirational orator, to be sure, but he offers nothing in the way of real world solutions to the problems that face Main Street Americans.

“I am in the solutions business,” Senator Clinton said at a Wednesday campaign stop in Texas, “but my opponent is in the promises business.  This is not about the questions; this is about the answers.  And the answers get right to the heart of who is ready to serve on Day One to be president and commander-in-chief.”  In short: Obama is a talker, and I am a doer.

On the TV and radio talk shows and on the blogs, the solutions phrase gained great traction.  Edited b-roll footage on MSNBC showed Bill Clinton repeating “solutions” so many times at a single campaign appearance that he seemed almost comedic.

But, comical or not, some analysts agreed that the Clinton team must do something—anything—to stave off potential disaster.  Obama’s penchant for closing polling gaps has proven formidable, especially when viewed alongside his stunning victories in the Potomac states.  And Obama the turnaround artist has already started to take a bite out of Ohio and Pennsylvania, closing Clinton’s once massive 30-point lead to within 16 points in Ohio, with similar movement in the Keystone state.

In a "normal" election year 16 points would be a whopper, the sort of lead you could rest on for a couple of weeks, but Obama has made the math so fluid during the last seven weeks as to render 16 points dangerously narrow.  The Clinton camp has already effectively abandoned all hope in Wisconsin, where Obama has now surpassed Hillary and is now solidifying what may be another big victory.  If Obama’s surge continues, Hillary Clinton could face the possibility of winning only narrowly in Ohio and possibly Pennsylvania, and a narrow win would be like a loss.  In her worse case scenario, a loss in either state cloud spell doom for her delegate arithmetic, causing her to fall short of the magic number needed to nominate.

So Team Clinton seeks to marshal all their resources and bring every foot soldier into the streets of the Buckeye and Keystone states.

And once more, we watch the trenches being dug, and we watch as another firewall is built.

On the Republican side, John McCain received the endorsement of Mitt Romney, one in a series of carefully staged photo ops to continue diplomatic relations with the Right.  Though Romney and McCain had been the fiercest of adversaries (their dislike of each other had become common knowledge among their contingents and among journalists who followed them on the campaign trail), they praised each other and then posed awkwardly for the television crews and the photographers.

For McCain, the Romney endorsement was a small victory in an otherwise awkward day.  Some reporters latched on to what appeared to be a credibility gap in the senator’s previously adamant stand on torture, for McCain had earlier in the day voted alongside the Bush administration, which has allowed water-boarding as an interrogation technique for some suspected terrorists and al-Queda operatives.  McCain has consistently said he regards waterboarding as a form of torture, and he has been equally firm in his conviction that torture is unacceptable even in time of war.  During GOP debates in the fall and earlier this year has said that opposition to torture was fundamental to American democratic processes.

Some analysts said that his actions on Thursday were an expedient and hopefully effective step in convincing dissident conservatives that he is indeed one of them by linking himself to A) President George W. Bush, and B) a form of inducement during interrogation that some hardliners say is effective.  Though the McCain campaign’s official statements on the matter were convoluted, even more gerrymandered were the media reports suggesting that McCain has somehow “flip-flopped” on one of his core positions.

In essence, McCain said he was merely supporting a wider range of interrogation techniques that do not—he stressed—do not include torture, which he says he is firmly opposed to in any form.

But McCain was still making all possible efforts, however slowly but surely, to consolidate conservatives and GOP rank and file behind his candidacy.  With his whopping lead in the delegate head count, and with his distance over rival Mike Huckabee growing larger, it seems sure he will comfortably cruise into the nomination.  But, still forced into fighting brush fires among those to his right, and with Huckabee approaching a virtual tie in the mega state of Texas, McCain may be wasting valuable time during which he could be sharpening his attacks on the leading Democrats.

McCain, appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live that night, graciously thanked Romney for his endorsement, acknowledging voters who cast millions of votes toward Romney in the previous primary and caucus states.  This brought King directly to the issue of those on the Right who seethe at the possibility—now nearly inevitable—that McCain will be the GOP nominee.  After watching a few video clips of Rush Limbaugh and others in action, McCain offered the polite retort that he respects Limbaugh and welcomes healthy, open debate.  McCain said he continues to bring conservatives on board every day.

Look, I have taken positions from time to time that all of the party hasn’t agreed with,” McCain said, using as an example his participation in the investigations into the Jack Abramoff scandals, but “I am who I am to start with, and that is as a conservative first.”

I know I have to unite the party, but more importantly I have to have the vision to lead this party into the next generation and into this century.

Friday, February 15, 2008: Today the Clinton campaign sharpened its attacks on Barack Obama.  Friday was another day of closing poll gaps between the two Democrats and ex-president Bill Clinton hammering away at Obama from every direction.  Again, the central thesis for the Clinton campaign is this: Obama is a lot of pretty talk and soaring rhetoric, but not a man of action, and certainly not someone who is ready to take the reins of the presidency from Day One.

In addition, a new Clinton tack emerged: downplay the meaningfulness of the 22 total states that Barack Obama has won through this week, as well as the edge he has in total votes cast.  The Clinton camp suggested on Friday that her roster of 11 state wins is more important, since Obama has won primarily the sort of small, rural and backwater places that do not carry the same clout in the high stakes reality of November 4, 2008—a day the electoral college will make the difference between four more years of the GOP in the White House, or victory for Democrats.  Clinton’s big state wins include New York, New Jersey, California and Massachusetts.  Obama has won in places like Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Alabama and Nebraska—the flyover places often joked about by East and West Coasters and flight attendants.  The Democrats will need every electoral vote they can attract, so why nominate someone who is only popular in the hinterlands?

These arguments over the “middle” parts of the country shared the stage Friday with a growing internal debate about super delegates.  In the past week Obama has picked up the support of 11 supers, compared to a net loss of three for Clinton, including John Lewis, one of the delegates who migrated to Obama after committing to Clinton.  Some supers had made their commitments many months earlier (in some cases six or seven months ago) and are now seeking ways to dust off those pacts.

The Clinton spin-doctors sought feverishly to shore up commitments throughout the day, even introducing the phrase “automatic delegate” instead of super delegate to reporters in an effort to discourage further slippage.  “Automatic delegates” should not be able to change their mind so easily, said the Clinton people.  But some powerful Democrats—like Nancy Pelosi—were seeking to hedge their bets, suggesting that the will of voters should trump any handshake or verbal commitment made months ago before primary voters had their say.  After all, what could be a worse scenario for the Democratic Party than to have a convention where popular support for Obama was overridden in favor of backroom elitist dealmakers “automatically” making Hillary Clinton the nominee?  Not only would Obama supporters feel robbed, splitting party support, but such a spectacle would also give John McCain and the GOP marketing machine their most potent weapon—Democrats as the same old bunch of out-of-touch elitists and self-serving hacks, disconnected with the rest of the country, ignoring the will of the voters, and making decisions they think is best for you.

There is also the fear that a ramrod Clinton nomination, ignoring the state-by-state maps and the aggregate popular votes, will ruin any chance of the Democrats taking an edge in the red states, and perhaps even tilting a few swing states like Ohio and Florida easily into GOP hands, a scenario just the opposite of what the Clinton campaign machine has marketed all along with their quasi-incumbent candidacy.  A few Republicans were beginning to openly salivate at the possibility of a split Democratic convention: a Clinton coronation made possible by a handful of super delegates despite Obama entering Denver with more “regular” delegates.

Throughout the day the Clinton campaign again saturated the airwaves in key states with their toughest ads yet—those slick 30-second spots suggesting that Obama is ducking additional debates.  On the campaign trail early in the day, Bill Clinton stumped with an even more specific attack: Obama ducks these debates because he knows he cannot hold his own against Hillary, who is a creature of substance, not style.  And later that same day he added the striking caveat that Obama the great orator and talker, in reality, has had no hand whatsoever in any of the positive developments of the last several years.

Obama remained polite and tactful and attempted to put it all in perspective, reminding reporters at a press conference that when Hillary Clinton “feels low” she often goes on the attack.  For Obama, this is just more of the same, and yet another example of exactly why Democrats do not need to reward the Clinton’s with more time in the White House and bringing along the requisite partisanship and negativity that accompanies Bill and Hillary.  Further, Obama again stressed that enough is enough when it comes to debates.  After all, he has willingly participated in every one of the 18 Democratic debates, and he has already agreed to two more.  From Obama’s point of view, the time for the theatrics of debate and sound-bite confrontation is over, and the time to move forward has arrived.

Clinton, who tends to gain ground in the debates and sometimes benefits from the one-to-one confrontations with Obama, is also seeking any opening to blunt the Obama momentum.  Debates can occasionally prove decisive in close races, and clearly it is the belief among Clinton operatives that Obama has the most to lose by even the slightest misstep or blunder.  In their best-case scenario, additional debates give their candidate more opportunities to knockout Obama completely, or least send him reeling against the ropes with a few dramatic punches.

And there is also the belief that debates—with their logistical complexities and endless prep time—might cool Senator Obama’s momentum by eating away at his whistle stop time among the voters.  Obama continues to draw extremely large crowds, sometimes filling full sized arenas and auditoriums to capacity, an informal visual indicator of how quickly his candidacy can shift poll numbers in single Congressional district or state.  If the Clinton camp can taunt Obama into additional debates, this could make the difference by blunting his continued ascension.

The battle between these mega candidates still splits Democratic voters along visionary lines.  Clinton still seems to many to be the smart, safe bet.  Why fool around with an optimistic but risky throw of the dice, a choice based on emotional and hopeful appeal?  These Democrats can see a White House victory as something real, something more tangible than that illusive, shimmering mirage.  But for many others—indeed what appears to be the slight majority of Democrats—why return to another four or eight years of the same nasty divisiveness and gridlock?  To these voters, energized by his vision of a sea change in Washington, surely Obama offers the real choice for a tangible change in the way we view politics. 

The big question for Democrats over the next ten days: how far should this fight be allowed to go?  If the delegate head count remains tight going into the convention, Democrats could face a cliffhanger with all the predictable bitterness and rancor.  But if they can somehow create unity out of this titanic struggle, the Democratic Party may very well find its path back into the White House, perhaps this time for a long stay.

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