Judgement Eve

Without further ado:

BEST CASE SCENARIO, TEAM OBAMA: the Al Davis. “Just win, baby.” If Obama goes home with more votes in PA than Clinton, that’s the ballgame. Winning the Keystone State outright would dry up the last plausible argument – that Obama can’t win large swing states – and the superdelegates would start falling like dominoes. Not to mention the donors.

BEST CASE SCENARIO, TEAM CLINTON: Double-digit win. Anything over 10% is good, anything over 15% is very good, suggesting not only viability but maybe the beginnings of momentum, or at least the meme that Obama’s hit the high-water mark and will only descend further. Given that Team Clinton started the month of April with a little over $9M in the bank and a little over $10M in debt, a decisive win is absolutely imperative to open the pocketbooks of people whose contributions she desperately needs down the stretch.

TEAM OBAMA IS HOPING: That HRC was too clever by half. The Rove offense relies on driving away loosely motivated voters, and at last check, the surveys are still showing about 6-8% undecided. If those people don’t bother to post, and Philly comes through strong, Obama could close the deal right here.

TEAM CLINTON IS HOPING: That nobody will remember their lead was 20% the day of the Ohio and Texas primaries. Beating Obama by 4-6% may look like a win, but it will barely move the needle on delegate margins. If she actually manages to donk off three-fourths of the lead in six weeks, and the media latches onto the fact, it won’t be good. At this point, it’s not a straight fight; she’s got to cover the point spread, and right now, we’re not even sure what the spread ought to be.

WORST-CAST SCENARIO: A push against the Vegas line, so to speak. HRC wins by 6-8%, not enough to make a convincing case for her own momentum but enough to keep from sending her to live with a nice farm family – which means that, just like Rocky, we’re headed to a bloody split decision…and two fighters being rushed directly to the hospital afterward.

Now, normally this is where I remark about how John McCain is sat on a pile of gold, watching this entire debacle unfold, laughing through his cigar smoke and drinking champagne out of a stripper’s brassiere. However, it looks like McCain’s going to have to accept public money for the general election campaign, which will cap him at $84M. Team Obama has already made it clear they’re not going the public-money route, and given their success at adopting the Howard Dean model for aggregating small donations, they stand to have quite the financial advantage in the general if they get there. Obviously, assorted 527s and other independent-expenditure entities will affect that balance as well.