The Note: Good, Bad, or Ugly

March 3, 2008 -- The climactic round of voting is still 24 hours away, but the phone is ringing now for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and it's a call from a party that's anxious (fiercely urgent?) to have things resolved. (How many rings will it take for her to pick it up?)

Yet she's making a big call of her own (a party-line connection): It's 3 am, and do you know where your Rezko-loving, NAFTA-flipping, universal-healthcare-lacking neophyte stands?

The Clinton campaign will follow one of three paths this week -- one that's good for her, one that's bad for her, and one that's ugly for the Democratic Party.

The "good" one involves actually winning the contests her campaign has been assuring supporters she will. That would slow and stop Sen. Barack Obama's momentum -- and, after a solid month of losses, we'd have a ballgame again, even if she'd still be trailing.

If she loses either Ohio or Texas (or both), then she chooses between bad and ugly. Either she gets out or she stays in -- and that choice will hinge on a key question: Does she see a distinction between the good of the Clintons and the good of the party?

Obama, naturally, wants to take a step back. Remember when this was a battle for delegates? He does -- and he joins his supporters in turning up the heat on Clinton, telling ABC's Terry Moran on Sunday that it's nearing time to end the nomination fight.

"If we do well in Texas and Ohio, I think the math is such where it's going to be hard for her to win the nomination, and they'll have to make a decision about how much longer they want to pursue it," said Obama, in an interview broadcast on "Good Morning America" on Monday, with more to come on Monday's "Nightline."

"We've been picking up superdelegates during the course of the last several weeks. And I would assume that there are going to be people who want to bring this to an end one way or another, because John McCain's out there," Obama said.

Obama's response to the "3 am" ad: "She has got a little desperate toward the end of this campaign."

Says Moran: "They think they're on the verge of nailing this thing down. . . . This candidate smells victory."

We can quibble over what clarity looks like, but Obama, D-Ill., enters the voting with a 113-delegate edge, per ABC's delegate scorecard. With polls tight in Ohio and Texas, even clear Clinton wins won't make a substantial difference making up that gap.

The key point that will shape the week: "Obama has such a big lead in pledged delegates that there is virtually no way Clinton can overtake him on Tuesday," Anne Kornblut and Shailagh Murray write in The Washington Post. "The best hope for keeping her candidacy alive, advisers acknowledge, is to win the popular vote in the two big states with contests and to break about even in the delegate hunt."

If Clinton does not sweep on Tuesday (and with apologies to Camp Clinton, it's Clinton -- not Obama -- who has more pressure this week), voices like this will begin to rise from the ranks of the superdelegates: "I just think that D-Day is Tuesday," Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., said on "Face the Nation." "Whoever has the most delegates after Tuesday, a clear lead, should be, in my judgment, the nominee."

The pressure will reach new levels after Tuesday, almost regardless of the result. "While there has been a growing expectation that Mrs. Clinton would drop out if she did poorly on Tuesday, it is less clear what lesson she might draw from a mixed result," The New York Times' Brian Knowlton reports.

"Some political analysts said that Mrs. Clinton -- who has clearly sharpened her attacks on Obama, even as he has been outspending her -- appeared to have made some headway in recent days in raising doubts about his experience and readiness to be commander in chief."

Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson didn't sound ready to give anything up on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "Two percent is a very close number, considering how many delegates have [been awarded], how many Americans have voted," he said. "We're going to have a great day on Tuesday. We're going to win this nomination. This nomination fight is going to go forward after Ohio and Texas."

Between Rezko and NAFTA and red phones, there's just enough out there this Monday to make this thing interesting yet. Wedged between a national cable appearance and some time with Jon Stewart, expect an all-out Clinton assault (starting with a Monday morning press conference) in what could be her campaign's final election-eve. (And keep an eye out for Obama's two-minute closing ad Monday evening.)

Clinton, D-N.Y., is also displaying optimism (the campaign, she said Sunday, will go on "a lot [stumble] while longer") but some advisers are less than fully confident.

"Privately, Clinton campaign advisors say their own internal polls show the race tightening in Ohio and remaining very close in Texas," ABC's Kate Snow and Eloise Harper report.

"In their best case scenario, Clinton aides hope she could win Ohio by 3 to 6 points and squeak out a victory in Texas. They would consider that a good night and reason to fight on to Pennsylvania, which holds its primary on April 22. Other scenarios, they admit, are not so pretty."

The stakes are these: "If Barack Obama defeats Hillary Clinton in Texas or Ohio tomorrow, he will take control of a unified Democratic Party and enter the race against John McCain with an already-established reputation as a political giant-killer," Bloomberg's Catherine Dodge reports.

"Democrats have so far largely managed to avoid the kind of rancor that would split the party and endanger its prospects in November. . . . That may change if voters fail to deliver a clear verdict tomorrow."

As we peer into Clinton's mind, "Mrs. Clinton believes there are new whiffs of momentum around her," The New York Times' Patrick Healy reports. "For better or for worse, Mrs. Clinton has come full circle on her message, again embracing the strategic assumptions with which she began the campaign in January 2007: That she is the most able and experienced Democrat to be commander in chief, to manage the economy, and to win what she calls a 'wartime election' in November."

There's Clinton's ringing-phone ad, of course (and the Obama response -- bringing the campaign back to the Iraq-muddied ground Clinton hopes she'd left long ago).

"We're still waiting to hear Senator Clinton tell us what precise foreign policy experience that she is claiming, and that makes her prepared to answer that phone call at 3 in the morning," Obama said in Ohio, per The Dallas Morning News' Todd J. Gillman and Christy Hoppe.

A new radio ad in Texas is even sharper: "Hillary Clinton voted to send our troops to war," Gen. Tony McPeak says in the ad, adding that Clinton did not read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.