On Sunday, the New York Times delivered a startling SAY WHAT? moment in the midst of this historic Democratic presidential race. It’s analysis of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fading prospects, it started off, “If not her, who?” It then considered a raft of up-and-coming female politicians, including none other than Minnesota’s freshman senator, Amy Klobuchar.

It was startling, if only because “Klobuchar” and “presidential candidacy” have rarely, if ever, been mentioned in the same breath. But there was her picture, in full color, along with 11 other women the Times’ writer deemed up-and-comers. The story’s nickel assessment was merely glancing: “In the Senate, the names that come up most often are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.”

But for better or for worse, after less than two years in the Senate, Klobuchar’s name is out there. For the entire Times assessment of future female presidential prospects, go here.

No response yet from Klobuchar’s Senate office.

The tenor of the daily conference calls staged this morning by the Clinton and Obama campaigns couldn’t have been more starkly different.

Reporters did their level best to throw Clinton’s people on the defensive, even though aides said they have every intention of pushing onward. At one point, a reporter asked campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson point-blank: “Have there been tany discussions of not going forward?”

“No,” Wolfson replied curtly. “No discussions.”

When Obama’s folks got on the line, it was more like a victory lap than anything else, with campaign manager David Plouffe crowing, “We can see the finish line here.”

The campaign trotted out several of its heavy-hitting superdelegates, including Sen. John Kerry, the nominee of four years ago. Kerry said Tuesday’s results were “a giant and decisive stride toward the nomination,” adding: “Bottom line: He clearly did more than he had to. He beat every poll and every single expectation.”

Sen. Amy Kloubuchar took center stage for a few moments, harkening back to Obama’s blowout victory in the Minnesota precinct caucuses: “He did incredibly well in my state and unleashed an energy that will be impossible to contain.”

Pointing to Obama’s wins here, as well as in Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Colorado, Kloubuchar said “the heart of the heartland is with Barack Obama.”

As Politically Connected editor Dennis McGrath pointed out over at McMemo, the instant analysis about Tuesday’s results assessed Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects as, in the front page assessment of her hometown New York Post, “TOAST.”

If anything, the morning-after assessments from pundits and columnists are even more scathing. Here’s a sample:

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter: “Barack Obama not only nearly clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday night. He also answered a big question about the fall campaign. The glass jaw that Hillary Clinton and John McCain thought they saw turned out to be an illusion.”

Former Bush aide Matthew Dowd: “What do President Bush and Hillary clinton have in common? Neither had an exit strategy ready. The curtain on the long Clinton Broadway campaign is coming down. It hasn’t hit the floor yet, but it’s real close.”

The Politico’s Roger Simon:
“Hillary Clinton’s strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is now a fond wish wrapped in a desperate hope.”

The New York Daily News’ Michael Goodwin: “It’s over. Barack Obama now wears the crown of inevitability. Unless he falls off a cliff, or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright pushes him, he is going to be the Democratic nominee.”

The Times of London’s Gerard Baker: “An end to this apparently interminable contest is in sight at last.”

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass: “Her people will argue that she’s still politically alive. His people will say that the delegate math belongs to him. And what’s left, for a short while, are those angry men and women in those little boxes on TV, bickering at each other about Democrats denied their votes in Michigan and Florida. But it’s over for Hillary.”

There’s more out there — much more - but you get the drift.

The blogosphere and talk radio erupted Friday over a clip lifted from “The War Room,” the 1993 documentary about Bill Clinton’s victorious presidential run. An anonymous poster placed a 37-second snippet on the Web, pumping up the audio and adding subtitles purporting to echo the words on the soundtrack. In the clip, Mickey Kantor, a longstanding close adviser to both Clintons, is shown saying “those people are [excrement].” The anonymous poster added subtitles that strongly suggest Kantor was referring to Indianans (who just happen to have a Democratic primary coming up Tuesday); Kantor said he was referring to pollsters.

More incendiary was his statement a few seconds later, supposedly describing white Indiana voters with the N-word. Kantor went ballistic, telling the Huffington Post, “I’ve never used that word in my entire life, ever, under any circumstance, ever. I have listened to [the video] and so have you. You can’t tell what it is I’m saying in that second sentence, you can’t decipher that.” He went on to threaten to slap a libel suit on whoever posted the clip — if that person can ever be found.

Adding to the murkiness was the fact that “The War Room’s” director D.A. Pennebaker promptly told The Washington Post that the clip had been doctored.

Judge for yourself. Here’s a longer excerpt from the film, minus the subtitles and audio enhancements added to the brief clip. Kantor’s quotes begin around the 4:50 mark and are almost totally inaudible.

Fairly funny time waster on a slow news day, making its way around the Web. Check it out.

Former President Jimmy Carter is flogging his newest book, a memoir about his mother, Lillian, and so has taken to the phone lines to do a virtual book tour. The book, “A Remarkable Mother,” is being published in conjunction with Mother’s Day and, in his words, is intended to show “in those ancient times of the 1920s and ’30s, here was a woman who was staunch in her beliefs and led a full life.”

In a telephone interview, Carter also spoke of his mother’s enlightened racial attitudes at a time when race relations in the South were anything but enlightened — which allowed the conversation to pivot to the current presidential campaign.

Carter said his mother would be “delighted” watching the Democratic presidential nominating campaign play out between the first plausible black candidate and the first plausible female candidate. “I don’t think she’d be concerned at all about the intensity between the two of them,” he said. “She never gave up a fight until it was over and I wouldn’t expect [she would expect either Obama or Clinton to do so.]”

Just for the record, Carter said he agrees with his mother — and doesn’t intend to tip his hand in the race (as a former president, he’s one of Georgia’s superdelegates) until after the final primaries on June 3.

He called the continuing brouhaha about the declarations of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright “completely superficial.” With his own long history of attending black churches, Carter said such rhetoric “is the kind of preaching I’ve seen constantly. We grew up that way, hearing preaching against the sin of racial discrimination.”

Although the thermonuclear attacks being lobbed by both the Clinton camp and the Obama camp have caused many Democrats to despair about the party’s prospects in November, Carter’s sanguine about the outcome. “It looks kind of dismal now,” he said, recalling his own successful race in 1976, when Republicans Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan tore each other to shreds. “Almost all the Republicans came back,” he said. “Parties always tend to come back together.”

Predictably, given the history of his post-presidential campaign, Carter is once again the center of controversy, this time for meeting the leaders of Hamas last week while on a visit to the Mideast. He has been criticized by the Bush Administration and representatives of the Israeli government, who regard Hamas as a terrorist organization (The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. went so far to call Carter “a bigot” with “bloody hands;” “I just ignore that kind of thing,” Carter said.”

“There’s nothing I need to apologize for,” Carter said. “It’s a mistake for Israel and the United States not to talk with Hamas … [t]hey won an election fair and square.” In considerably more detail, Carter defended his personal diplomacy Monday in a New York Times op-ed.

For quite some time now, there’s been a raging debate about whether Bill Clinton’s unscripted forays are helping or hurting his wife’s campaign. Over the weekend, a perceptible shift started, with several pieces accentuating the negative — hard.

A weekend piece in the Wall Street Journal described what it called the “BIllification” of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. And while it described his stumping and talking as overall lending momentum to her campaign, it also recycled nuggets of the damage done:

His role has come at a cost — to morale among some campaign staff, relations inside the Democratic Party and with African-American leaders, and in the view of some, his own legacy. He has lost considerable credibility with many party leaders, who, as “superdelegates” to the party convention, will be crucial in determining who is the Democratic presidential nominee.

The New York Daily News, never a friend of the Clintons, weighed in with a piece that went so far as to suggest that his heart bypass surgery had wrought a change in his personality. It’s not-so-subtly headlined, “From Bubba to Flubba: Slew of gaffes makes pals wonder why Bill is losing it.”

Next up, Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, detailing Bill’s it’s-all-about-me-and-my-legacy style of campaigning, before cutting to the chase:

When Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign was launched, in January, 2007, her supporters feared that Bill would overshadow her … Now the constant fear is that he will embarrass her. When he makes news, it is rarely a good day for his spouse. Whether he was publicly comparing Barack Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s campaigns in the eighties or privately, and apoplectically, complaining that Bill Richardson broke his word by endorsing Obama, every story has seemed to reinforce an image of Clinton as a sort of ill-tempered coot driven a little mad by Obama’s success.

Finally, Bloomberg’s Al Hunt all but buried him, calling him the “biggest loser of the campaign:”

The most talented and resilient politician of this generation has damaged his standing with gaffes, political miscalculations and a series of paranoiac, volcanic eruptions.

A common question these days among political heavyweights — including longtime Clinton devotees — is this: How can a guy this smart act so dumb?

Granted, this piling-up of the convention can do a 180-degree flip in an eyeblink, but the convergence of such a chorus is striking.

Update: The drumbeat is continuing. The New York Times has now weighed in. So has Newsweek, calling Clinton “the most tragic figure of the 2008 campaign.”

Courtesy of the North Carolina Republican Party, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s diatribes are back at center stage in an ad that (coincidentally?) is running in the run-up to the North Carolina primary on May 6.

Barack Obama’s supporters are, not surprisingly, crying foul. John McCain has denounced it, washing his hands of any responsibility for it. But it’s safe to say this won’t be the last time Obama and Wright are lashed together.

Take a look.

A couple of images have been floating around the web that give striking portraits of how the battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has been playing out across the nation.
First, there’s a geographic rendering:

Next, what’s called an “decision tree” that shows how counties nationwide have been breaking for the candidates:

Not breaking news exactly, but worth chewing over.

As Pennsylvanians finally go to the polls, the name of the game today for the Clinton and Obama campaigns is managing expectations and cranking up the spin machine. Both sides have become adept at it, but for this primary, neither side is bothering to even wait for the polls to close.

Over the lunch hour, an e-mail went out from headquarters in Chicago, predicting a big win for Hillary Rodham Clinton — along with an elaborate explanation of why it won’t matter.

Some excerpts:

With all eyes on today’s contest, one thing is clear: Pennsylvania is considered a state tailor-made for Hillary Clinton, and by rights she should win big. She has family roots in the state, she has the support of the Democratic establishment-including Governor Rendell’s extensive
network-and former President Clinton is fondly remembered.

Clinton has been leading by large margins in Pennsylvania. In the weeks leading up to the primary, she led by as much as 25 points. They were so confident that their own Pennsylvania spokesman said Clinton would be “unbeatable” in Pennsylvania-regardless of spending by her opponent.

There has been much speculation about what each campaign needs coming out of tonight. The facts, however, are simple.

Behind in delegates and sporting a 14-30 primary record (not good enough even to make the playoffs in the NBA Eastern Conference), the Clinton campaign needs a blowout victory in Pennsylvania to get any closer to winning the nomination. Even President Clinton said that only a “big, big victory” will give her the boost she needs.

Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the
Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged-except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table.

Two hours later came Clinton campaign’s rebuttal to Obama’s prebuttal. More excerpts:

The Obama campaign is attempting to pre-spin the results from tonight’s Pennsylvania primary by suggesting that Sen. Clinton should - and will - win.

But after the Obama campaign’s “go-for-broke” Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state, a fundamental question must be asked: Why shouldn’t Sen. Obama win?

Sen. Obama’s supporters - and many pundits - have argued that the delegate “math” makes him the prohibitive frontrunner. They have argued that Sen. Clinton’s chances are slim to none. So if he’s already the frontrunner, if he’s had six weeks of unlimited resources to get his message out, shouldn’t he be the one expected to win tonight? If not, why not?

As the phrase goes, watch what they do not what they say.

There’s a reason Sen. Obama and his campaign have ratcheted up their year-long assault on Sen. Clinton’s character and ended the Pennsylvania campaign with a flurry of harsh negative attacks. It’s because they know that a loss in Pennsylvania will raise troubling questions about his candidacy and his ability to take on John McCain in the general election. And it’s because they know that the race is neck and neck and tonight’s contest is a measure of where the campaign stands.