We’re on the eve of what could be the end of the Democratic nominating contest. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that if Barack Obama wins Texas and Ohio, it’s over. The official recognition may be days or weeks in coming. But that will be it.

But you can see a bit of a pattern shaping up. Compared to where things were after the Potomac primary, things look bleak for Hillary. A loss in Texas seems likely and one in Ohio is at least possible. But the hype and expectations for Obama are so high that I think people expect him to take everything.

There’s some factual basis for that. In the Virginia and Maryland and later in Wisconsin he seriously outperformed the polls. But Hillary’s lead in Ohio, though greatly diminished, seems pretty resilient.

In the final analysis, as we keep coming back to, this whole thing comes down to delegates. So I don’t think a narrow victory in Ohio alone keeps Hillary’s hopes for victory realistic. But Ohio isn’t just a big state. Like Missouri it’s a quintessential swing state. It has all sorts of karma and political mojo surrounding it. And Obama’s thrown tons of resources into it.

If she comes out the winner there, which is the probable outcome if you take most of the polls at face value, I can’t see where she’s getting out of the race any time soon.

SurveyUSA has their final Ohio number out: Clinton 54%, Obama 44%.

With Zogby saying Obama has openned a narrow lead, this is looking like another one of those someone’s going to look pretty stupid moments, just as we had between these two pollsters going into California.

And remember, that one didn’t work out well for Zogby, though admittedly he got Missouri right where SUSA did not.

Note too that this is I think the third poll out today (Rasmussen, PPP and SUSA) that shows Clinton increasing her margin over Obama in Ohio, not just maintaining a diminishing lead.

For tomorrow’s TPMtv episode we’re doing a final March 4th primaries round up, looking at what the states are, how many delegates they have, who looks set to do well where, and so forth. So I had a member of the staff write up a memo for me. And looking at the polls a bit more closely, it looks like the polls in both Ohio and Texas are trending in Hillary’s direction, though she still appears to be behind in Texas.

The polls aren’t unanimous of course. There are significant exceptions. Like Zogby, for instance, has Obama for the first time in the lead in Ohio. But he’s clearly an outlier on this.

A big complicating factor in Texas is the caucus, where people assume based on past caucuses, that Obama will significantly outperform his poll numbers.

As I said earlier, everybody who’s watching the numbers closely can see this as well as we can. And compared to two weeks ago, the probable outcome for Obama in both races looks good. But a Hillary win in one or especially two races would be a jolt to the atmosphere we’re in at the moment where Obama is seen as an all but unstoppable force.

From the beginning of the primaries, there’s been a pattern I’ve seen from a lot of Hillary supporters which of late has basically had it that despite Obama’s wins in February, a couple solid wins on March 4th means he has to get out. I’m not kidding. I hear this a lot. It’s a weird mindset. There was a lot of it after Super Tuesday. I cannot tell you how many emails we got here at TPM on February 6th arguing that it was over and obvious that Obama had to bow out after Super Tuesday. And I’ve started seeing a series of similar emails this morning: if Hillary wins Ohio and Texas, she’s got the nomination. (I just noticed an example here in our reader blogs section.)

That seems ridiculous to me. But I’ll admit I’m less sure than I was even a couple days where we’re going to be on March 5th. Under most probable scenarios the overall delegate math doesn’t change a lot tomorrow. And I still don’t see the superdelegates going for the candidate who has a clear deficit among pledged delegates. But politics is unpredictable.

According to the Obama’s official schedule, he has no events in Ohio either today or tomorrow. He’s in Texas the whole time.

I’m not sure who this favors. But the weather tomorrow in Ohio is supposed to be simply terrible.

From the AP …

The National Weather Service is looking for freezing rain to cover most of the northern half of the state, which will be under a winter storm through Wednesday morning. The weather service says if temperatures fail to crack the freezing mark on Tuesday, a “significant” coating of ice is possible.

Across most of southern Ohio, there’s a threat of heavy rain and flooding. The forecasters expect 1 to 2 inches of rainfall in the region on primary day, with even higher amounts possible in some areas.

Blogging about his new book — Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority — Michael Connery previews his week at TPMCafe’s Table for One:

Over the next five days, I’d like to talk about the history of the youth vote, why Barack Obama is just the very visible tip of the iceberg that is today’s rising youth participation, what it all means for the Democrats, and how the broader progressives movement can capitalize on this youth wave to secure a progressive future majority far into the 21st Century.

Check it out.

I think it’s clear that NAFTA/Goolsbee flap has blunted some of Obama’s momentum, especially in Ohio. The volume of press releases out of the campaign certainly suggests that.

The Obama campaign just sent out a Youtube clip from a little more than an hour ago on MSNBC that shows video from the Canadian parliament in which a member of the opposition (I’m not sure who, if anyone can tell me, I’d appreciate it) attacks the government for meddling in the Democratic primaries; and then Prime Minister Harper responds.

Now, the headline of the Obama camp’s email reads “Canadian Prime Minister Addresses Issue.” But what’s interesting is that Harper, who’s close to DC Republicans, actually doesn’t address it in a way that’s helpful to the Obama campaign. Indeed, notwithstanding a statement of regret and other flowery language, he seems to go out of his way to confirm the essential charge against the Obama campaign.

Remember, both things can be true — Goolsbee may have said these things (he’s already eyed with suspicion by many Democratic policy types) and the Tory government in Canada used this to damage Obama. One doesn’t negate the other.

Late Update: Readers confirm the questioner is Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party which, if I’m not mistaken (and this isn’t my subject) is the smaller and more social democratic of the two opposition parties.

Last week I posted snapshots of the Democratic races in Ohio and Texas, using Pollster.com’s poll of polls.

At that time, Obama had passed Hillary for the first time in the Texas race and was trending upward. But look what’s happened since:

Obama is now ahead by a mere .2 percentage points in Texas, and it seems clear that the race there has been scrambled in the last few days.

In Ohio, the graph of Obama’s steep climb suggests more movement perhaps than there has actually been in the most recent polls (with the exception of Zogby):

Overall, Clinton holds a 6-point lead in Ohio going into tomorrow’s election.

Clinton supporters rally around memories of her miracle comeback in New Hampshire. Obama supporters cherish the memory of his breaking wide open what appeared to be a close race in Wisconsin. Which will it be? A comeback or a runaway? Or neither?

The sweeping federal corruption investigation in Alaska snagged another guilty plea today.

Jim Clark, one-time chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R), pleaded guilty to conspiring to arrange for corrupt oilfield contractor Veco to pay $68,000 for consultants and polls on Murkowski’s 2006 re-election campaign, none of which was ever disclosed as contributions to Murkowski’s campaign.

Murkowski ultimately lost in the GOP primary in 2006.

We’ll have more on this tomorrow at TPMmuckraker, but to put this in some perspective, the Anchorage newspaper once called Clark Alaska’s most powerful (unelected) official, and he is cooperating with the government. This should only get more interesting.

As I mentioned, another Alaskan mucky muck has gone down for public corruption. Jim Clark — lawyer, lobbyist, and former chief of staff to Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski (father of current U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski) — pleaded guilty today to a single conspiracy count.

Typically the way these plea deals work is for the cooperating defendant to plead guilty to some concise and discreet set of facts that doesn’t tip off other targets of the investigation as to prosecutors’ intentions. So you can bet, and the plea documents here suggest, that Clark was guilty of a lot more than that single conspiracy count.

But even that one count contains some tantalizing information. Clark admits to conspiring to have Veco, the Alaska oilfield contractor that is at the center of the federal investigation, make payments totaling more than $68,000 to two pollsters and a political consultant for services provided to then-Gov. Murkowski’s 2006 re-election campaign.

Who are they?

Here’s an excerpt from the Information filed in court today (emphasis mine):

5. Polling Company A was a business that provides polling services for political campaigns. Polling Company A was located in the State of Alaska.

6. Polling Company B was a business that provides polling services for political campaigns. Polling Company B was located in a jurisdiction other than the State of Alaska.

7. CONSULTANT A was a consultant who provided strategic analysis and other services to the campaign of the Governor of the State of Alaska. CONSULTANT A’s business and residence were located in a jurisdiction other than the State of Alaska.

Polling Company A is not identified by name in the court filings today, but Anchorage pollster David Dittman told the Anchorage Daily News last fall that Veco had paid him $20,000 for a poll for Murkowski in April 2006. The court filings today allege that Polling Company A was paid $20,000 for an April 2006 poll. Just a coincidence?

(Dittman later became a strategist on the campaign, although ironically he quit because, he said, Murkowski just wasn’t spending enough money. “I thought the governor was being too frugal with his own funds, in my opinion, and I just didn’t want to work so hard on a campaign that was underfunded when it didn’t need to be,” Dittman said at the time.)

After Dittman’s allegations appeared in the paper in September, Clark issued a statement denying the charge. Well, I guess things change.

Now, apparently, it wasn’t unusual for Veco to pay for polls for friendly Alaska pols. A Veco executive testified during one of the Alaska corruption trials that Veco had paid for “upwards of 100 polls.” Two pollsters, one of them Dittman, told the Anchorage Daily News that Veco had paid them for two different polls in 2006 for then-state Sen. Ben Stevens, son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. The Stevens have been caught up in the Veco investigation but not charged with any crimes.

But that still leaves the two out-of-state outfits: “Polling Company B” and “Consultant A.” Who are they? When do we get to find out?