The big headlines tonight are now in focus. Hillary takes three of four primaries, and the two big states. Yet the delegate spread didn’t budge. The possibilities seem to range from a high-single digit pick up for Hillary to the possibility of a net pick up for Obama. So, big headlines and buzz for Hillary, but the same stubborn picture on the pledged delegate front.

Both sides are spinning like wild about what the different numbers mean. And a lot gets said about how each side might be ‘willing’ to win. But it’s not going to be up to them. The super delegates are going to break for the winner of the primary/caucus process, as long as it’s relatively clear. Who the ‘winner’ (in the perception of the supers and Democrats around the country) is will also be heavily informed by what the available evidence suggests about who’s going to be the stronger candidate in the general. I don’t pretend that makes the whole thing simple or the outcome obvious. I just mean to stress that the spin from each side isn’t going to be as big a factor as you might think. It’s not up to them as much as they want to convince everyone that it is.

A lot’s getting said tonight. And a lot of it is baseless speculation. But the one thing that rings true to me is this: The Clinton campaign got rough and nasty over the last week-plus. And they got results. That may disgust you or it may inspire you with confidence in Hillary’s abilities as a fighter. But wherever you come down on that question is secondary to the fact that that’s how campaign’s work. Opponents get nasty. And what we’ve seen over the last week is nothing compared to what Barack Obama would face this fall if he hangs on and wins the nomination.

So I think the big question is, can he fight back? Can he take this back to Hillary Clinton, demonstrate his ability to take punches and punch back? By this I don’t mean that he’s got to go ballistic on her or go after Bill’s business deals or whatever else her vulnerabilities might be. Candidates fight in different ways and if they’re good candidates in ways that play to their strengths and cohere with their broader message. But he’s got to show he can take this back to Hillary and not get bloodied and battered when an opponent decides to lower the boom. That will obviously determine in a direct sense how he fares in the coming primaries and caucuses. And Obama’s people are dead right when they say, he doesn’t even have to do that well from here on out to end this with a substantial pledged delegate margin.

At the end of the day, the winner of the pledged delegate race has the strongest claim to the nomination. Everything else is spin. But it’s a strong claim, not incontestable.

Let’s hypothesize for a moment a scenario in which March 4th broke the back of Obama’s campaign. He emerges bloodied and doesn’t seem to be able to stand up to Hillary’s assault. His delegate margin is big enough that she can’t catch up. But she runs through the next dozen or however many remaining contests there are making up steady ground on the pledged delegate front. I don’t think a small margin of pledged delegates will be enough if Obama looks like a damaged candidate who seems unable to fight off a determined and ruthless opponent. Just hanging on to the margin he banked in February won’t be enough because fundamentally, if neither candidate has it locked by the convention, the super delegates will want to pick the candidate who looks like the general election winner and is the favorite of Democrats at the time of the convention, two qualifiers which are in practice two sides of the same coin.

I don’t think the above is a likely scenario. In fact, I think it’s quite unlikely. Almost everything remains stacked against Hillary. There’s no denying that. But I think this does point to what this debate — literal and meta — will turn on over the next couple weeks.

Two days before the Ohio election, Zogby had Obama ahead. The day before the election, he had it as a dead heat.

SurveyUSA’s final poll, released Monday: Hillary ahead by 10 points, 54-44.

Hillary won Ohio 54-44.

It’s almost an exact replay of the California primary, where Zogby and SurveyUSA were at opposite ends of the spectrum and SurveyUSA nailed the exact final vote.

TPMCafe reader post: “I think one thing is clear this far into the Democratic primary race: Both Obama’s and Clinton’s supporters must now drop out of the race.”

Donna Brazile says Howard Dean and other party leaders should be prepared to step in.

What happened last night?

I have a built-in bias against the usual explanations. Getting a grasp on the dynamics of a sprawling presidential campaign is like trying to predict the weather, before the advent of satellites and computer modeling.

There are in fact few visible manifestations of a presidential campaign: TV ads, stump speeches, dueling consultants. Most of the social, cultural and economic engines that drive voting decisions bubble beneath the surface.

Like tribal explanations for weather phenomenon, there is a tendency to ascribe cause and effect based on proximity of events. This is especially true among political reporters and TV people. The ads they run, the events they report, the insiders they talk to must be what propels voters: Muskie was sunk by his tears. Dukakis by Willie Horton. Kerry by Swift Boaters. Vast sociological storm systems reduced to a sound bite or a highlight reel.

That’s not to say that NAFTA or red phones or Farrakhan play no role, or that the rhetoric of the campaigns is just white noise. But it’s almost always far more complicated than what we see on our TVs.

Which is a long way of saying, I don’t know with any precision what happened last night.

What do you think?

We have an open thread set up at TPMCafe. Have at it.

We’ve obtained the new ad being run against John McCain in Ohio by that independent Democratic group that we first reported about yesterday. Take a look.

Everyone is still sorting through last night’s numbers to determine who won how many delegates. That process is complicated by the allocation system for the Texas primary and the fact that the Texas caucus results are only partly in, even now.

But it would appear at this point that Hillary will net only a few delegates, putting a small dent in Obama’s overall delegate lead. Again, that’s the most likely scenario as things stand now. We’ll be updating that information through the day.

What’s Bush up to while the country is distracted by the election?

How about bypassing Congress in cementing our long-term presence in Iraq.

The latest delegate counts we’ve compiled show Hillary with a net gain of 15 delegates last night — not counting the Texas caucus, which remains outstanding.

Current estimates suggest the Texas caucus results will trim her net gain to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 delegates.