Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic reports the Clinton campaign is trying to play the expectations game:

To: Interested Parties

From: The Clinton Campaign

Date: Friday, February 29, 2008

RE: Obama Must-Wins

The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he’s playing the part.

With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The Obama campaign and its allies are outspending us two to one in paid media and have sent more staff into the March 4 states. In fact, when all is totaled, Senator Obama and his allies have outspent Senator Clinton by a margin of $18.4 million to $9.2 million on advertising in the four states that are voting next Tuesday.

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and – of course – making speeches.

If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there’s a problem.

Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear:

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

Wow, where to begin? Ok, first of all, as I’ve already stated Ohio and, yes indeed, Texas, are must win states for her. There is no amount of spin which the Clinton campaign can give which will change this fact. For the sake of argument let’s assume that the news media proclaims this a huge victory for Hillary Clinton. The media will likely give her one or two days of decent coverage, much like Mitt Romney got after he won the Michigan primary, but soon they will turn their attention back to the delegate number, which Obama will still have a pretty substantial lead in. Unfortunately for the Clinton campaign, the next two contests will be the Wyoming caucus (3/8) and the Mississippi primary (3/11), both of which Obama will score strong wins in, which, if the news media is covering wins, must acknowledge and point out strongly. Remember that Pennsylvania’s primary is not until April 22, and Barack Obama has already come within 4 points of Clinton according to the most recent poll (the RCP average for Pennsylvania has Clinton with a 9-point lead, which is actually pretty low). Even assuming that Hillary Clinton is able to close the gap between herself and Obama (which, depending on the number, could be as much as $15 million for this month and $33 million – $38 million) this would not be enough to close the CoH disparity between them (don’t forget that Hillary Clinton still has $7 million in debt, not including the $5 million she loaned herself). Obama’s campaign will easily out-organize her on the ground in Pennsylvania, and will prevent her from claiming enough delegates to ever overcome his lead (especially considering that after Pennsylvania, there are only 7 states and 2 territories left, of which Obama will be the strong favorite in 4 and very competitive in at least 2).

The Clinton campaign has become a parody of itself, and if they insist on trying to carry this past March 4, the Democratic party will forever remember that Hillary Clinton placed her own ambitions ahead of the good of the party and the country.

Update: Matthew Yglesias states what I, and what most people in the real world, are thinking:

So if the candidate who’s leading in delegates, national polls, fundraising, and states won can’t sweep the March 4 primaries, then Clinton is the real winner? Maybe they should just go back to arguing that Texas doesn’t count.