State of the Race: My conservative heart is all atwitter

At the start of this election season -- which was what, four years ago? -- the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton would coast to the Democrat nomination while the Republicans cannibalized themselves, split the party, and left themselves weakened for the general election. As has often been the case this time around, conventional wisdom has been mind-meltingly wrong.

The Republican nomination has been, for all intents and purposes, settled since February 5th. It was made official this week, but there was no serious challenge to John McCain once Mitt Romney withdrew.

Conversely, the Democrat race is still undecided and -- despite Barack Obama's lead, hype and momentum -- it still isn't likely that he'll win the nod outright. As it stands now, he'll have to pick up some 77 percent of remaining delegates. This task is substantially less daunting than Hillary needing to pick up 96 percent of remaining delegates, but neither of the tasks are the least bit likely to happen. This means that the Democrat race is going to go on at least until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, and likely longer than that. That's at least another seven weeks of the Democrats' circular firing squad.

The closeness in the delegate count makes the delegates of Florida and Michigan all the more important. DNC Chairman Howard Dean has said that he doesn't want the DNC to have to pay for re-votes in the states because that's millions of dollars the DNC could be using to wage the general campaign. Florida governor Charlie Crist has said, however, that the DNC should have to pay for any re-vote -- after all, it wouldn't be fair for non-Democrats to have to pay for a Democrat election.

All of these developments should have Republicans giddy with anticipation. The conventional wisdom at the start of this campaign -- which, again, has proven totally worthless -- was that Democrats were going to waltz right into the White House. But, as they often do, the Democrats have completely whiffed the hanging slider, opened the door into their collective nose, fumbled in the red zone, bogied the 17th, etc.

Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, has made a huge strategic mistake in trying to characterize Obama as inexperienced with national security. Her "3 am phone call" ad that asked "Who would you rather answer the White House phone at 3:00 in the morning?" could bring her a tactical victory in getting voters to question Obama's experience, but that argument is a strategic failure against John McCain. Hillary might be more experienced than Obama in foreign policy, but John McCain dances circles around both of them. As I see it, Hillary still loses the nomination but this ad has the potential to serve as the pinprick through the heart of the Obama campaign.

Add to that the fact that the media has taken offense to the charge that they're blatantly shilling for Obama -- and have thus started asking tougher questions -- and the shine quickly comes off the Obama apple. If anything shady comes out of Obama's past, he's done. His entire candidacy is predicated on the idea that he's above politics, that he's different, that he's HOPE and CHANGE all rolled into one. Without that, he's got nothing. I mean, people certainly aren't packing into arenas to hear him talk about policy.

I warned before about underestimating the Clinton machine. I still stand by that. Although it appears virtually impossible for her to win the nomination at this point, I'm still not counting her out. She's not above fighting dirty, and her "kitchen sink" strategy against Obama certainly worked in Texas and Ohio. The trouble with that, however, is that Obama will likely respond in-kind -- leaving them both bruised and bloodied for the general election. Meanwhile, John McCain gets to start hammering both Obama AND Hillary. Provided he doesn't say anything incredibly stupid, he should go into the general election at a distinct advantage.

As I said, I still think Obama wins the nomination, but Hillary may have inflicted -- or may yet inflict -- a mortal wound to the Obama campaign.