No end in sight

The Democratic presidential nominating process could have been wrapped with Tuesday's contests. Victories in Texas and Ohio by Barack Obama would have been decisive blows to the campaign of Hillary Clinton, but the day went to the New York senator and brought her campaign back to life. In fact, though she was written off by many as recently as Monday, it now seems that she has, as one pundit put it this evening, "a 50-50 chance" to be her party's nominee.

This, even though Barack Obama went into Tuesday's voting with a roughly 100-delegate lead and came out with the same. Clinton's popular-vote margin was impressive in Ohio (10%), and she gained nine delegates (78-69) there. Texas gave her a smaller margin (4%) and, with its labyrinthine system of primary voting followed by caucuses, a one-delegate edge (103-102) so far. (The caucus results still haven't been completed.) Throw in her win in Rhode Island and his in Vermont and Clinton won the night by 13 delegates (208-195).

The Boston Globe has Obama leading overall, 1,571 to 1,462. Neither candidate, it seems, can reach a majority of 2,095 with the remaining pledge delegates alone, which means the superdelegate vote will be key. Clinton's argument is that she can deliver the big states to the party in November, and her primary wins in California, New York, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Florida seem to back that up. Obama, on the other hand, has the most delegates, has won the most contests, has raised record amounts of cash, and has brought many new voters to the party. Those points are difficult to ignore.

In another confusing situation, Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is calling for "do-over" voting in Florida and Michigan, two states that the DNC penalized for moving their primaries by stripping them of delegates.

What all this means is ... damn, it's anybody's guess now.