Last chance to check our gal for a pulse before they hit her with the Texas/Ohio defibrillator on March 4. The trends ain’t good — trailing in every poll taken this month except ARG’s weekend survey, and that lead is already gone with the wind. The Messiah’s internal numbers have him up seven; take that as the baseline for your over/under. Under’s traditionally a safe pick with him, although not lately. If he does better than expected even in a state set up for her demographically, what’s left?

Even if you prefer him to her, root for the upset tonight. If she pulls it off, not only does the campaign go negative but the odds of this clusterfark coming to pass increase exponentially. If you thought the prospect of superdelegates deciding the nomination was awesomely awesome, replete as it is with vote buying and odious racial politics, wait until the pledged delegates start getting bought and sold. Exit question: How on earth does Hillary hope to get a strong turnout in November if she wins the nomination by leaning on the delegates Obama won fair and square to flip?

Update: Karl reminds me of a point made in one of the Politico articles. How is Hillary supposed to leverage her dubious cred as a superior commander-in-chief to Obama in a Democratic primary? If she hits him from the right on terror, it may help with white men but at the cost of giving Obama an excuse to revisit her Iraq vote and paint her as a continuation of Bush. If that strategy worked, she’d have tried it already.