By Brian Braiker

Erik in New York City was frustrated because, as an independent voter, he wasn't allowed to cast a primary ballot. Dan in Minneapolis spotted Al Franken at the St. Louis Park High School caucus location, but there was no sign of Dan's first-grade teacher. And Peter in Lowell, Mass., who voted at the fire station down the street from his house, wanted it known that a fire engine turned on its lights and siren while he was casting his choice.

These election-day snapshots are not from man-on-the-street interviews. They are yet another Google offering. The search giant teamed up with a company called Twitter to create the killer Super Tuesday Web application. Twitter is a group-messaging service that allows users to hold a Web-based conversation using instant and text messaging. Users subscribe to each other's feeds to receive short updates--or "follow"-friends.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP... 

Check this space for frequently updated analysis of the Super Tuesday returns.

OVERALL

With wins in Delaware and Connecticut, it was clear that Obama could capture toss-up states. But in the end, he couldn't win the biggest battleground of all: California. Combine Obama's defeat there with losses in Massachusetts and New Jersey--states where some observers expected his recent surge to counter Clinton's early strength--and Hillary may wake up Wednesday with a "stopped Obama's mo" narrative working in her favor.

All in all, though, expect a tie. "In terms of delegates we're going to end up in essentially a draw today," Obama guru David Axelrod told reporters earlier. That's not spin. The current count is Obama at 562 and Clinton at 582, according to CNN--with neither California (Clinton) or Missouri (Obama) tipping the scales too far in favor of one candidate, thanks to proportional allocation of delegates.

On the Republican side, McCain, who won the crown jewel of California shortly after midnight, is still well on his way to steamrolling the opposition--but perhaps without sizable Southern support, as Huckabee eked out close victories across Dixie in West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Expect the pundits to obsess over Huck's surprise showings at the expense of McCain's expected victories, even if they're not worth as many delegates--an emphasis that will underscore the work still required to reconstruct the Republican coalition. Romney, of course, was waiting for the Big Enchilada with fingers crossed--he needed a major win outside of his home states of Massachusetts and Utah to stay alive. But when word finally arrived that McCain had captured the Golden State, you had to wonder: will Romney keep on keeping on?

One MSM note going forward: the networks have spent the night "calling" full states like it's Election Day--even though, in many cases, the delegate tallies matter more. Not that I blame them; what else is there to do before the votes are even counted? Still, I wonder if by the time they get around to crunching the numbers, viewers will have moved on--or fallen asleep--with largely irrelevant story lines already firmly fixed in the national consciousness.

DEMOCRATS 

Clinton: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Tennessee, Oklahoma, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey

Clinton is looking at least as strong as expected, if not stronger, considering Obama's wave of positive press over the past two weeks. The first big disappointment of the night for Obama: New Jersey. An upset there would've signaled a potential tidal wave nationally, but the Latino vote swung the state for Clinton--which ended up also helping the New York senator capture Arizona. The Clinton camp is breathing a sigh of relief after fending off a last-minute Obama surge in Massachusetts, fueled, perhaps, by the Kennedy endorsements. (Some good they did.) The size and swiftness of the win (a surprise even for the Clintonistas) was encouraging--especially as an omen for California, where Clinton was hoping to thwart a similar Obama insurgency. And ultimately she did, finally capturing the Golden State as Tuesday turned to Wednesday (key constituencies: Latinos and women). In the "no duh" category, Clinton was expected to win handily in all three Southern states and her home state of New York. Final margins--and the all-important delegate counts, which could show closer-than-expected Obama finishes in the Empire, Garden, Golden and Bay States--still to come.

Obama: Georgia, Illinois, Delaware, Alabama, North Dakota, Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, Missouri, Alaska

Delaware was the first toss-up decided tonight, and was seen in Obama circles as a sign of good things to come in Connecticut--another state where independents, who tend to favor Obama, weren't allowed to vote. The harbinger turned out to be true; Obama soon made the Constitution State, once a Clinton lock, the second swing state to swing his way. And by 1:00 a.m., the Illinois senator completed a come-from-behind victory in Missouri--a famous political bellwether--clinching his near sweep of the South and Plains States. The losses in Massachusetts and California, however, were serious let downs that prevented Obama from harnessing any real momentum for Feb. 6 and beyond. Interestingly, Obama's massive margins in Georgia--he won among women and white men, for example--were a bit unexpected, and helped rebut the insta-CW that the senator took the Peach State solely on the strength of his (still overwhelming) black support. A similar story in Alabama, which was a closer contest than Georgia. I expected North Dakota, Minnesota, Idaho, Colorado, Alaska and Kansas to fall for Obama--they're caucus states, which means they're well suited to his organizational strengths (especially among young voters). And as for Utah--Clinton is hugely unpopular in the Beehive State, making it ripe for an Obama rout.

Too Close to Call: New Mexico
 

REPUBLICANS

McCain: California, Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma, Arizona, Missouri

No alarms, no surprises. With California and Missouri comfortably in his column, McCain is crushing his rivals in the delegate count and will remain the leader when all is said and done. "As much as I've relished come-from-behind wins," he said tonight, "I think we have to get used to the idea that we are the Republican party front-runner for the nomination. And I don't mind it one bit." That said, McCain had hoped to show better below the Mason-Dixon line, where social conservatives made it clear tonight that they're still uncomfortable with candidacy. Huckabee for VP? It'd be one way to thank him for crippling Romney. Let the healing begin.

Romney: Massachusetts, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Colorado, Alaska

A loss in the Bay State would've killed Romney's campaign. Same goes for Utah, where he led in the final pre-Feb. 5 polls by 75 percent. Minnesota was a pleasant surprise (I had it leaning to McCain). And Romney hit his targets in the low-delegate "frontier" states, where he was the only candidate to really compete. But with a bruising psychological defeat in California, his firewall state, and dispiriting bronzes across the South, it's difficult to image Mitt continuing (credibly, at least) to cast himself as the only conservative alternative to McCain. Unless, of course, he's neck-and-neck with Mac in California delegates. Unlikely--but it's his last best hope.

Huckabee: West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee

Arkansas was no shocker--it's Huck's home state. But West Virginia spelled serious trouble for Romney, who was expected to win. (Read my take here.) Eventually, with narrow upsets over McCain in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama--Mac led narrowly going in--Huckabee completed a Southern sweep that dashed Romney's hopes of building an anti-McCain coalition of conservatives. In fact, now that Romney has lost California, Huck will likely supplant Mitt as the last non-McCain standing--an amazing feat considering his constant lack of cash. "Over the past few days, some people have been saying that this is a two-man race," he said from Little Rock. "Well, guess what? It is. And we're still in it." Whether he hangs on as serious rival or potential veep remains to be seen.

Paul: N/A

No wins for Paul, but his libertarian leaning message endeared him to hands-off North Dakotans and Alaskans, who awarded the Texas congressman a total of 10 delegates. Still, with an overall tally that's 10 times smaller than Huckabee's, he's no closer to the nomination tonight than he was this morning.

Citing her 40-33 lead over Barack Obama in the latest local poll, most observers would say that Hillary Clinton is the favorite to win tonight in Minnesota. But the Obama campaign would disagree.

The reason? The youth vote.

It's no secret that voters aged 17-29 propelled Obama to victory in Iowa and South Carolina. In the first-in-the-nation caucuses, kids chose Obama more than four to one over the next closest competitor, accounting for his entire 20,000-vote margin of victory; three weeks later he swept through the Palmetto State with 67 percent of the under-30s. But one of the key questions heading into Super Tuesday was whether Obama could keep turnout up and maintain his youth-vote advantage even though it would be impossible to devote as many resources to mobilizing young'uns in 22 simultaneous, coast-to-coast contests as he did in the handful of early-voting states. If successful, analysts said, he might wake up Wednesday in better shape than expected.

We won't know until the wee hours of the morning if the kids came out. But the bellwether state, says Team Obama, is Minnesota. Of course, the campaign insists that it's building a broad coalition and that young voters are only one piece of the puzzle. But it seems safe to say that if Obama wins in the North Star State, it will be largely on the strength of his unprecedented local youth-vote field program--which in turn might signal that similar results will follow in a series of other states.

Here's why. Hans Riemer, Obama's youth-vote director, recognized from the outset that Minnesota was unusually fertile ground for the 'utes. Thanks to the state Democratic party's coordinated youth-voter turnout programs in 2004 and 2006, Minnesota boasts the highest youth-voter participation in the country. It holds caucuses, which reward small, motivated, well-organized flocks of supporters. Unlike Iowans, Minnesotans can increase a candidate's statewide totals by running up big margins on college campuses. Seventeen year-olds can caucus. And everyone can wait until Election Day to register.

Seeking to take advantage of the "perfect storm" conditions, Riemer started building a youth-outreach program in Minnesota back in March. The plan included Students for Obama programs at every college from "Carleton and St. Olaf's to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities," and "BarackStars" groups in hundreds of high schools in every corner of the state. In September, Riemer sent his deputy youth-vote director, originally recruited from the state Democratic party, back to run the local effort. His triumphant Iowa youth-vote director joined him earlier this month. By last week, the Obama campaign had blanketed the TV and radio airwaves with ads custom-tailored to the sub-30 demographic.

Tonight, Team Obama views Minnesota as something of a "test case." If the Illinois senator can overcome Clinton's advantage in Minnesota, they say, today's other caucus states--Kansas, Idaho, North Dakota, Colorado--could produce similarly "youthful" results. And if all goes well--if Obama's young-voter support spreads virally to states not as susceptible to caucus-style organizing efforts--then the Democratic underdog may stand to gain (or even win) in the battlegrounds of California and Massachusetts.

The folly of youth? Maybe. Or as in Iowa and South Carolina, maybe not. We'll see soon enough.

Contributed by Suzanne Smalley

By Holly Bailey 

SAN DIEGO, Calif.--John McCain just touched down in San Diego for a last minute rally. With polls showing the race in California tight, McCain is speaking to a few hundred supporters here, a move that doesn't seem aimed at wooing undecided voters as much as getting prime placement on the local news just as voting closes tonight.

McCain has spent much of Super Tuesday on a plane. He took off from Newark airport just outside New York City just about six hours ago, but he and his entourage have not been entirely out of touch with what's happening today. His campaign chartered a plane from Jet Blue, which has Direct TV at every seat.

McCain's aides have been closely monitoring cable TV coverage of the campaign all day. In fact, when word broke that Mike Huckabee had won the West Virginia Republican presidential caucus--a contest that Mitt Romney had hoped to win--several McCain aides threw their hands in the air and shouted in delight, clearly pleased that the Arkansas governor had played spoiler.

From here, McCain heads home to Phoenix, where he will monitor election results. Aides have cautioned that it will be a long night. McCain isn't expected to go before the cameras until at least 11pm EST. Asked on the plane what themes the senator might highlight tonight, win or lose, Mark Salter, McCain's longtime aide and chief speechwriter, shrugged. "I really have no idea," he admitted.

The networks are calling the West Virginia state primary convention for Mike Huckabee, which is good news, of course, for the former Arkansas governor. But it may be even more significant--in a negative sense--for Mitt Romney. The West Virginia results represent a victory of passion over organization, and it's hard to read them as anything but a repudiation of the Massachusetts pol's* efforts to rally anti-McCain conservatives around his candidacy.

When Romney arrived this morning in Charleston to address the Republican convention, it was largely assumed that he had Mountain State in the bag. That confidence was partly the product of pure investment; his campaign went to work in the state in 2006, long before his rivals arrived, and Romney had visited repeatedly over the past several weeks. And part was establishment support; Mitt began the day with 280 committed state delegates (more than Huck or McCain) and all three West Virginia superdelegates in his column. Finally, the campaign expected its superior ground game to propel Romney to victory in state's new, chaotic "convention" process, which, like a caucus, would reward organization over name recognition or momentum. “We have had the only organizational presence in West Virginia to speak of,” John McCutcheon, a state consultant for Romney, told the New York Times this morning. “It’s all Romney all the time.”

So what happened? Romney led at first with 41 percent, but failed in the second round to secure the 50 percent necessary for a win. Supporters of McCain, who crashed and burned in the first round, may have joined forces with Team Huckabee in the second to put Huck over the top, 52-47. “Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain’s inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney’s campaign of conservative change,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. No response yet from the McCain or Huckabee camps.

All due respect to Madden, c'est la vie caucus. What's clear from the results is that, despite his advantages, Romney was unable to absorb enough Southern conservatives into his coalition for a majority--even in a state where McCain had minimal support. That doesn't bode well for Romney's chances in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri--all hard-fought Dixieland contests where Mitt is hoping that right-wingers will catapult him to surprise first-place finishes as their anti-McCain candidate of choice. If the West Virginia pattern extends to stronger McCain states (like those listed above) Huck will likely continue to split the reliable right vote with Romney and pave a path to victory for the Arizona senator. Huckabee's early upset may even embolden his troops to turn out in great numbers across the South, further diluting Romney's share of the vote.

All in all, not the best way for Romney to start the day.

Karen Breslau files this report from Hillary Clinton's campaign: 

A visibly ill Hillary Clinton is at home in Chappaqua, sipping tea and honey, trying to get her voice back for a Tuesday afternoon round of satellite interviews (she coughed so hard during one interview Tuesday morning, it had to be cut off). Meanwhile, the expectations Kabuki goes on: no clear winner is expected tonight. Should Barack Obama lose in California or Massachusetts, two states once thought to be solid Clinton country, it would be a "bad night" for him, says the Clinton team. Two of her top advisers, Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn, held a conference call today, mapping out the "next phase" of the race, leading into the March 4 states. Penn, her chief strategist, says the campaign would like to have "about a debate a week" between now and March 4, and announced that the campaign has already accepted several invitations for debates in Ohio, Texas and Washington, sponsored by CNN, ABC News, MSNBC (Chris Mathews, who has been merciless in his criticism of Clinton, will host), and even FOX News. Penn says the Clinton camp believes she will benefit from "an extended conversation" allowing viewers to make a "head to head" comparison between Clinton and Obama. Clearly her team feels debates showcase her strengths, and could serve to focus more scrutiny on Obama than he gets at his huge, star-studded rallies-which are big on excitement and glamor but short on policy details. Penn was also gleeful over a comment that Obama made Tuesday during a television interview, in which he likened the mandate in Clinton's health-care plan to "telling a homeless person to buy a house."

"I don't think this is something even Harry and Louise would have said," Penn cracked, referring to the famous ad attacking the Clinton health-care plan of the early 1990s. Look for this line in a debate or a commercial before the sun comes up on Wednesday.

Wolfson, Clinton’s communications director, did his best to explain why the Clinton campaign has had to move the goalpost from Feb. 5 to March 4, when the next round of significant primaries are held. “We are all learning" he said, about the complex rules of the Democratic Party, which tend to allocate delegates proportionally and are designed to prolong the contest between two evenly matched candidates, a situation the party has not faced since the current rules were adopted in 1988. "Unless you have an early knockout punch thrown, you are going to get into a situation where two well-funded candidates are going to be unable to amass the requisite number of delegates." The next battle: persuading the Democratic National Committee to seat the pro-Hillary delegations from Michigan and Florida, despite their decision to move their primary dates up so far on the schedule that the DNC stripped them of their delegates.

Wolfson also mentioned the considerable influence that Ted and Caroline Kennedy, "two icons of our culture", have had since endorsing Obama last week and campaigning for him nonstop since and cutting testimonial ads featuring Caroline. Left unmentioned: the apparently unhelpful role Bill Clinton played in catalyzing the Kennedy reaction, with his harsh comments about Obama in the run-up to the South Carolina primary last month.

If the band of showers stretching from the Midwest to New England dampens voter turnout today, we’ll know what to blame.

Cars. Factories, too.

Meteorologists have long known that particles “seed” rainclouds, a process in which water and ice in the clouds grab hold of the particles, forming additional (and larger) droplets that are more likely to fall as rain. That led to the suggestion that particulate pollution emitted by traffic, businesses and factories, all of which are greater during the workweek than on the weekend (traffic to malls notwithstanding), should make for greater rainfall Monday through Friday. A competing theory, however, held that the increased pollution might instead thwart rainfall, by dispersing the water in clouds over more seeds; that would prevent the droplets from growing large enough to fall as rain.

At least for summertime rainfall in the southeastern United States, the verdict is in: weekday pollution is causing more rainfall midweek than on weekends.

Read the rest of the post here
 

Stumper reader Barbara L. writes: "I've been following the primaries and the caucuses, and yet I still do not quite understand the bottom line. If Obama is awarded the most delegates, is that the end of Clinton? Do popular votes count anywhere in a primary?"

Thanks for writing, Barbara. Popular votes do count--they determine the allocation of delegates. But they're not always representative, especially in districts that award an even number of delegates.

Here's why. In a four-delegate district, a candidate can win 54 to 46 in the popular vote and still only get half of the four delegates; 54 percent isn't enough to reach the three-delegate threshold. Same goes for districts with six delegates. You need to win by a landslide in these even-numbered districts--say, 65 to 35--to get that extra, tie-breaking delegate. Which isn't likely to happen very often in such a tight race.

All of which is to say: Obama and Clinton will probably split delegate count tonight. One might emerge with a slight lead. But neither will reach the 2,025 needed for the nomination or establish an insurmountable lead. So the popular vote might end up being the most important indicator, at least in terms of media coverage. I can imagine the candidate who racks up the most votes across the country claiming victory--and reporters treating such a claim as credible.

Still, the race will go on until either Obama or Clinton reaches 2,025, regardless of the popular vote. Tonight won't be the end of anyone (at least on the Democratic side).

Here's NEWSWEEK's Matthew Philips on Mike Huckabee, who's barnstorming the South in an attempt to stay relevant:

Gov. Mike Huckabee is downright tired of people asking him when he's going to drop out of the race for president, particularly as speculation mounts that he's in it just to raise his profile in hopes of a vice presidential nod. The day after The New York Giants stunned the world and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, Huckabee reminded the press of the dangers of calling a contest before it's over.

"They were also talking about how the Patriots had the Super Bowl wrapped up and there wasn't any point in people watching," Huckabee said Monday at a campaign stop in Texarkana, Arkansas, the latest of several he's held recently in airplane hangars at small airports throughout the South. "With only eight percent of the delegates in, it's way too early for that."

A full month after rushing out of the gates by winning the Iowa Caucus, Huckabee's campaign is stuck in neutral. It's not that he's going backwards so much as John McCain is surging ahead and Mitt Romney has continued to move forward.

Style guru Tim Gunn, the creative director for Liz Claiborne, a veteran of Bravo's "Project Runway" and now host of "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style," spoke about the harsh worlds of fashion and politics with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How important is image to a political campaign?
Tim Gunn: I can't imagine marginalizing image; it's critical. The clothes we wear send a message about how we want to be perceived, and about how we want to present ourselves to the world. I would think that there should be just as many image consultants involved in these campaigns as there are speechwriters.

What is it about politicians in particular—do you have to have bad taste to be one?
Well, all of these people come from Capitol Hill, and that place is another planet when it comes to fashion. I was on the Hill just this time last year, and I had all of these elected officials literally running from me saying, "I'm not a fashion person! Don't look at me!" In the beginning, I thought it was kind of sweet, but the more I thought about it, I began to find it appalling. You're an elected official. How many people see you and make judgments about you before they ever even know your point of view? I have to do something for these people.

I assume the people running from you were women. Do female politicians have it harder?
I'm deeply respectful of gender and of gender differences, and I like someone who acknowledges what his or her gender happens to be. I mean, are we ready for a male cross dresser in the White House? No. But frankly speaking, there are times when I wonder about Hillary.

Ha! Is there any female who pulls it off well?
I think Hillary should be taking a lesson from Nancy Pelosi, I really do. She, for me, is fashion on the Hill. She has a femininity yet a professionalism, and she has style. She's also not afraid to be a woman, and she celebrates it. She's not ever remotely vulgar or provocative in what she wears, but I have to say, she's a very sexy woman.

Alan Flusser, the author of ''Style and the Man,'' called Kennedy ''the last stylishly dressed president." Do you agree?
Well, you can't look at Kennedy without looking at Jackie, because they really enhanced each other. But it was clear that what was on the outside was important to them. They had a polish and a sophistication that was accessible, and I think that's why America embraced them. Those were the most glamorous days that Washington knew, and the only days that came remotely close to that were frankly—and forgive me—the Reagan years, and I think it was the Hollywood aspect. Reagan knew how to dress, Nancy had her own designer clothes, and there were a lot of movie stars walking around.

What's your take on the current candidates, as a group?
I look at them and I feel like they've stepped out of the 1980s. And what really disturbs me, deep down in my very core, is whether these candidates really think that having people talk about your clothes in a positive way could be a bad thing. To think that they might answer "yes" horrifies me.

Read the rest here. 

TODAY: Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe on MSNBC, answering a question about whether Hillary will win California:

You're talking states. What I care about [is] delegates. We will have more delegates than we had going into today. This is about winning delegates and onward we go.

ONE MONTH AGO: Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, answering a question about Hillary's third-place finish in Iowa:

This thing will be over on February 5th.

I hereby award McAuliffe NEWSWEEK's coveted "Wildly Oscillating, Up-Then-Down" Arrow.

On Feb. 2, the 3.2-million-member liberal PAC known as MoveOn.org launched an "Endorse-O-Thon" for Barack Obama. The idea was that supporters would sign up to send personal email endorsements to five or  ten friends, and some of those friends would sign up to send their own endorsements, and so on--a basic electronic extension of the old political cliche that the best surrogates are people's friends and neighbors.

But email is so, like, 2004.

Which is why I was pleased to see that the Obama "Endorse-O-Thon" has now migrated to Facebook--a more effective medium. To compare, I haven't received any email endorsements, but six friends have already invited me to join the "I endorse Barack Obama" and "I'm voting for Obama today" groups on the social-networking site. The gap has a lot to do with the different technologies involved. Email is private: a closed-circuit conversation, often between two people, it provides no context beyond the content of a particular message. Facebook, on the other hand, is  largely public: it exposes everything that your entire web of contacts is doing, saying and sharing at any given moment--and invites you to participate.

When I clicked on the message, I was immediately redirected to a page that tracked the activity of the "endorse Barack Obama" group. There were more than 20,000 members and 440,000 endorsements, with links to discussion groups and user profiles; every time a friend joined, a bulletin automatically appeared in a News Feed on my homepage. It was, in effect, a self-perpetuating community. As get-out-the-vote efforts go, it's a whole lot more convincing--and a lot more "Obama"--than a single testimonial sitting in my inbox. Facebook actually reveals how you're participating, as Obama says, in something "bigger than yourself."

(That said, some candidates are bigger than others. A search for "hillary clinton super tuesday" turned up exactly one relevant group--"I am supporting Hillary on Super Tuesday." It boasted 39 members.)

Expect to see more viral, social-networking "reminder drives" before next November. I'm not particularly bullish on the power of Facebook or MySpace to change politics, but this seems like a smart, modest way to harness my generation's social-networking addiction for a political purpose.

Now back to stalking people I haven't seen since college...

Here's NEWSWEEK's Karen Breslau on how Obama and Clinton are playing the Super Tuesday expectations game.

As Hillary Clinton's top advisers tried to put a brave face on her thumping in Iowa five weeks ago, they buoyed themselves by looking forward to Super Duper Tuesday. "This thing will be over on February 5th," campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe assured reporters the day after Clinton's third-place finish in the Iowa caucus. California, New York, New Jersey and other big Feb 5th states were "Clinton Country," the thinking went. Once the media finished swooning over Barack Obama and voters took a harder look, Hillary would start raking in the delegates. Of the 2025 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination, some 1700 are at stake on Feb. 5. But now that the fabled day has arrived, with Clinton and Obama all but tied in the polls, the Clinton camp is rolling out a new storyline. "The results are likely to be close and inconclusive," communications director Howard Wolfson said Monday. "Right now, we are looking at a fight that will go on way beyond tomorrow."

For Clinton's flu-ridden and ill-tempered members of her road crew, who have been barreling around the country since early December, it's a ghastly scenario. Even Clinton's legendary stamina is wearing thin. Fighting a heavy cold, she grew teary Monday morning at an event at the Yale Child Study Center, where she had once worked as a law student, as her old friend Penn Rhodeen described his first meeting with her, when she was clad in a sheepskin coat and bellbottoms. "You looked wonderful and so 1972," he said.

"Well I said I would not tear up," Clinton responded. "Already we are not on that path."

Hoarse and exhausted, she then hacked her way through events in Worcester and Boston, Mass., followed by evening appearances in New York with David Letterman and a syrupy Hallmark Channel town hall. No matter what the polls say, says her spokesman Jay Carson, "she will campaign as though she is twenty points behind." After voting early Tuesday morning, Clinton, her voice raspy, is scheduled to conduct more than 30 television and radio interviews with networks and with local stations around the country. Instead of planning a victory party for Tuesday night, the campaign has scheduled a nebulously named "Election night celebration."

Having learned to dial back expectations after the disaster in Iowa and the thrill of the comeback in New Hampshire, the Clinton campaign is wary of "Frontrunner Stumbles" headlines; they'd rather predict a muddle. In California, where Clinton has seen a 25-point lead evaporate since last fall, the backpedaling is in especially high gear. "We're going to lose," one normally upbeat staffer e-mailed from San Francisco. "How's that for managing expectations?"

Read the rest here.

 

Here's NEWSWEEK's Holly Bailey on the "guarded optimism" of Republican frontrunner John McCain.

Last week, John McCain was the epitome of confidence. Speaking to reporters on board his campaign plane en route to Chicago last Friday, the Arizona senator spoke at times as if he already had the GOP presidential nomination in the bag. He talked of uniting the party and of how he'd challenge the Democratic nominee, whoever that is. "I think it will likely be over on Tuesday," McCain predicted, acknowledging he "felt a sense of momentum." "I assume I will get the nomination of the party."

It was a surprisingly bold statement for a candidate whose superstitions about the campaign are well known. Throughout the race so far, McCain has gone out of his way not to seem too confident in a win-rejecting advice from his top aides to forcefully seize the mantle of Republican frontrunner. Even when the crowds and the momentum seemed to be on his side in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, McCain was a bundle of nerves, refusing until the last possible moment to accept that he was really going to win. "You know me," McCain often says. "I am just too superstitious about this stuff."

Indeed, McCain's air of confidence over the weekend proved to be only temporary. Speaking to reporters after a rally Monday morning in Boston, Mitt Romney's backyard, the old overly-cautious McCain was back, scolding a reporter who had dared to suggest the senator had been so bold as to suggest he'd lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday. "I am not predicting that," McCain insisted. "I am not predicting, I am not predicting... I am guardedly confident that we can do well. [But] I've seen more than one election go against what the polls show."

Still, his ground game suggests he's managing to keep his darkest fears at bay. While Romney has been campaigning almost frantically in the final days before Super Tuesday, crisscrossing the country from east to west and back, McCain has taken a more relaxed route. On Saturday, his busiest day, McCain hit three states-Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee-before ending up in the northeast, where he has spent the last two days. On Sunday, he held a rally in Connecticut. On Monday, he held two rallies, in Boston and near Trenton, New Jersey, before ending up in New York City, where he held a press conference and a Tuesday morning rally outside the Today Show studios in Rockefeller Center.

Read the rest here. 
 

Oh, right. "Super Tuesday." Yawn.

Psych! More like "yay."

This is only, like, the most significantest day of the 2008 presidential primary season to date, with a total of forty-three nominating contests in 24 states following arcane, inscrutable rules to allocate 3,156 delegates.

Are you ready for some politics?

We here at Stumper headquarters sure are. Or at least we will be after we finish the dueling cups of coffee on our desk. We'll be manning the ol' mouse-and-keyboard for the rest of the day, bringing you quick news updates, dispatches from NEWSWEEK reporters nationwide and, as always, original Stumper content.

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

DEMS PLOT STRATEGY FOR A PROTRACTED BATTLE
(Ben Smith, Politico)
Analysts think it likely that the race will be resolved within the month, as one candidate or the other amasses unstoppable momentum. But the possibility that the race could go even longer – possibly much longer – remains distinct... Conventional wisdom holds that a tie favors Obama. The first round of votes after Super Tuesday comes Saturday, February 9, when two states – Washington and Nebraska – caucus, while Louisiana and the U.S. Virgin Islands stage primaries. Clinton’s campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said yesterday that caucuses favor Obama, whose campaign has been shaped by grassroots enthusiasm and expensive organization... The other factor in the post-Super Tuesday weeks is race. With Obama winning 78 percent of African American votes in South Carolina, he will be hard to beat in heavily black states... Still, the same rules that could allow Obama – if no polling surge bears out – to survive defeat on Super Tuesday could help Clinton stay in the fight through a rough, momentum-killing month of February.  For Clinton, the last stand would be Super Tuesday II: March 4, when the biggest cache of delegates since February 5 will be at stake in four primaries, led by Texas and Ohio.

ISSUES RECEDE IN '08 CONTEST AS VOTERS FOCUS ON CHARACTER
(Gerald Seib, Wall Street Journal)
As voting unfolds today on this Super Tuesday, the two hottest candidates at the moment -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama -- are most striking for their ability to appeal to independent voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum, and for their willingness to compromise to get there. In other words, the election of 2008, thus far, is less about ideology and ideas and more about governing style and leadership ability -- intangible qualities on which voters are placing a higher priority than on issues. The tenor seems a reflection of the country's mood: Many voters are in revolt against the partisan wars and bouts of gridlock that have gripped Washington in recent years, and are seeking effectiveness above all. 

AS 24 STATES VOTE, A GRAB FOR DELEGATES, AND AN EDGE
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
There are two ways to approach the results. The first is old-fashioned: which candidates rack up the most states. But this is about more than popular vote totals; the point of these contests is to allocate delegates to the national conventions. Thus, the big question is how much attention to pay to the results map on television — lighted up with, say, states that have swung to Senator John McCain’s column — and how much attention to pay to the delegate counter. The answer is pay attention to both, though put somewhat more focus on states for the Republicans and put somewhat more on delegates for the Democrats. The delegate count might matter more officially, but the state results could count more politically, and that will be the central tension of the night.

8 QUESTIONS SUPER TUESDAY COULD ANSWER
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
Will Either Race End Today?  What Constitutes Victory?  What States Bear Watching?  Where Will Edwards's Voters Go?  Can Obama Win Latino Votes? Will Women Continue to Be Clinton's Secret Weapon? Can McCain Win Conservatives And Pro-Bush Republicans?  Which Democrat Is Positioned for A Long Campaign After Today?