Jack,
Don’t be this upset or dispirited (that’s MY JOB… 🙂
…After all the smoke clears–and after Obama wins by huge margins in Wyoming (March 8) and Mississippi (March 11)–Hillary will have gained virtually nothing in terms of delegates. Obama WILL have a pledged delegate lead heading into the convention. Period.
The one thing tonight’s Ohio-Texas sweep does achieve for Hillary is that it might make Howard Dean and the DNC act to do something to put Michigan and Florida back into play, a possibility I had discounted and/or underappreciated. THAT is the big, big, big, big, big, big (did I say big?) thing to keep an eye on right now.
If Florida and Michigan are given do-overs in the 7 weeks before Pennsylvania, Hillary could legitimately (I think) appeal to the superdelegates for the nomination IF she swept Pennsylvania and (do-over editions of) Michigan and Florida, making the total popular vote a virtual dead heat for all 53 Democratic contests (the 50 states plus DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico).
The deck is still highly stacked against Hillary. A series of low-percentage developments have to break in her direction, just for her to have a realistic chance.
If there’s anything worth being depressed about, it’s that ugly politics–enmeshed in an all-too-familiar web of identity attacks and utterly inane/trivial/peripheral/irrelevant non-issues (much like New Hampshire and the vapid questions of “likeability”)—not only succeed, but draw the overwhelming majority of media focus.
Your man Glenn Greenwald has commented on this at length on his Salon blog.
I conclude with this postscript, which doubles as a repeat of what I said in a previous recent post:
Thank God the delegate allotment methods/mechanisms are what they are in the two parties. Had the current primary systems been reversed, it would be Hillary and Romney in the general election.
PPS–I have been (since New Hampshire), am now, and will long continue to be amazed at how impotent and small we are as human beings, given the fact that the presidency of the United States–such a significant part of the living history of the world I have been born into and now inhabit–has been so clearly revealed (if it wasn’t widely known before this year) as a prize utterly dependent on the arcane, quirky and ever-inconsistent internal rules of political parties.
Food for thought in accordance with this PPS: If Hillary and Obama were competing in a general election under current Electoral College rules, Hillary would have a lead, pending the Michigan and Florida decisions.
With CA, NY, NJ, OH, TX, MA, and AZ alone (she’s won a handful of other states excluding Michigan and Florida), Hillary would have roughly 185-190 electoral votes, off the top of my head. Add the small states, and she’s around 215. Give her either Michigan or Florida, and she has roughly 235-240. With both Michigan AND Florida, or with a Mich-Fla split and then Pennsylvania in her column, Hillary would have just about cracked the magic 270 number.
These momentous–and, moreover, hellaciously (shamefully) expensive–elections are alarmingly dependent on sets of rules that are maddeningly uneven, inconsistent, imbalanced, insufficiently democratic, and generally dependent on far more variables than anything we should see in a truly healthy democratic society.
To quote the white segregationist Richmond (Va.) newspaper editor when he witnessed the African-American lunch counter sit-ins first hand, circa 1960: “Eheu, it gives one pause.”

I was fairly confident he’d win TX; and still may based on delegate count. But it was disappointing.
However, as I’ve written several times about OH, having been born and raised there: hate to say I told you so.
Ohio is still pretending this is the 20th century. They have a lot of sheep who go for name brands only; they are realiably 2 or more years behind the rest of the country in terms of catching on (see 2004 election); and their race relations are unusually abysmal for such a diverse state.
Clinton has learned and applied too much from Atwater/Rove/Carville, and unfortunately won over low-info/low-education voters with it.
Obama must play to win in PA thoroughly, or his delegate lead may not help enough even if it doesn’t erode.
As for the Dumbocrats in the wider sense (sorry to borrow that pejorative from the wingnuts, but it feels right today): if they can’t see who’s more electable and who represents the future of the party, they deserve what they get. Clinton is actually in a worse political position the longer she hangs on, but she’s within her rights to do so, and we just have to live with it unfortunately.