There will be charges of "media unfairness" but the media is always unfair to every Democratic candidate. That's because the rich oligarchs own most of the media and the Republicans are their best servants (although an argument can be made for the way that B. Clinton delivered all those trade agreements). Plus, it's hard to sift through all the reportage and separate unfairness from cultural sexism from pure politics from the well of disfavor that H. Clinton has carried for years to determine how each event and the press coverage of each event has helped or hurt H. Clinton. And anyway, H. Clinton has had two weeks of support from SNL, for what it's worth.

On the other hand, we have the native garb photo which either was provided by the Clinton campaign, along with suspicions that the apparently phony Canadian memo story may have come from the Clinton camp. We have H. Clinton's bizarre demands over the unwanted unaccepted Farrakhan endorsement. Every day we have Clinton plants calling talk shows. I guess that Obama plants call shows too, but they seem to do it better and change their pitches slightly from show to show. Clinton callers are reading from bad scripts. The amount of smearing that Obama has gotten over the past two weeks has been depressingly familiar (recalling past smears from past campaigns). Whether from H. Clinton or the Republicans, he's been hammered with negatives.

In short, Obama has plenty of reasons to claim that he's been bullied. He hasn't. When something emerges he answers it. I don't know if that will be effectively if the shit keeps flying this fast, but it's worked better than the pity party over the "pimp" word, or ignoring the "windsurfing traitor meme" from the last cycle.

I expect that the hostility from the Clinton camp will boil over. If Clinton wins the popular vote in either Ohio or Texas (or both) there will be some self-generating justification in continuing the campaign. There's always 2012, for ex (although if there is a perception that Clinton sabotaged the Dems in 2008 by keeping her people away from the polls expect the hostility towards Clinton to make a run in 2012 impossible).

I think that for all the talk about Obama's followers being cultish, it has been the Hillary supporters who have the disconnect with reality, and who have to reinforce themselves by retreating into their compatriots. I haven't visited TalkLeft today, but I bet there's already a piece trying to connect Obama to Rezko (so much for Jeralyn's pro-defense positions) and Big Tent is either explaining how things are swinging towards Hillary or how she'll survive another sweep by Obama.

At some point the Clinton backers will have to face reality, will have to come out of the bag (as glue-sniffers used to say), will have to do the math, will have to smell the coffee. At that point reality and rationality will have to return. The Clintonites will either have to get in line with the rest of the party or try to ruin it. We shall see.