What do we now know?

First things first: John McCain has officially sewn up the GOP nomination. He's over the needed delegate count, and Huckabee has withdrawn from the race. For McCain, the campaign for November 4 starts today.

Hillary desperately needed to win in Ohio and Texas to keep her candidacy alive. Okay, mathematically, that was somewhat hyperbolic, but she was clearly losing ground. Taking 3 of the 4 Democrat primaries yesterday (she also took Rhode Island, while Obama took Vermont) broke Obama's winning streak and showed her campaign is still viable. What is particularly interesting is that Clinton had lost ground, and regained the lead only in the last few days. The fact that she was able to recover from Obama's seemingly insurmountable swell of momentum is in itself quite noteworthy. What happened?

I think a number of factors are at stake here. Many analysts are claiming that Clinton's most recent ad campaign (who do you want answering the phone at 3am if there's a crisis) has had an effect. It's also true that the media are now picking up on the fact that they've essentially turned Obama into their darling, so they're starting to train their guns on him. And there's a good chance there was some crossover voting by GOP members wanting to set the Republicans up for victory in November by electing their desired opposition.

One other thing Hillary did, and which I think was critical, was that she showed some levity in the final days leading up to these primaries in showing up on Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. I watched her Daily Show segment, and it seemed to me she did everything just about right. Jon Stewart opened the segment by asking what she was doing appearing on his show just hours before the primary rather than campaigning, and she replied, "I know. Pathetic, isn't it?"

It's too early to say she's righted the ship, but I will say this: had Obama won either Texas or Ohio, Hillary's campaign would have been put on life support. Obama still has the delegate lead, but this one is still too close to call - and the superdelegates are now looming larger and larger.

In unrelated news, it looks like Indiana might actually get a say in who the Democrat candidate is.