Can Barack Obama be stopped?

It's particularly frustrating for the Clinton campaign because, literally, what's gone around has come around. Now, Mrs. Clinton isn't allowed to make a mistake without being called on the carpet. 

It’s a far cry from the treatment Bill Clinton received in ’92. Think about all of the potholes he stepped in during that campaign year, and yet he managed to come out stronger with voters, and sometimes, with the media.

We've seen this before, and it usually happens for the winning presidential candidates.

Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Clinton, even Jimmy Carter were all given the benefit of the doubt compared to their foes. 

Whether it was Gerald Ford in '76, Al Gore in '00 or George H.W. Bush in '92, none of these candidates were allowed to apologize for mistakes like their opponents. It makes for an incredibly frustrated press operation -- and I'm currently observing that in the Clinton camp.

Still, there's one piece of media bias that's working in Clinton's favor---it's not dictating the terms of her surrender.

She's being allowed to decide her finish line. With even a one-vote victory in both Ohio and Texas, and she'll get to move the goal posts to April 22nd.

If she wins in Pennsylvania (even if she trails in the delegate count), the goal posts get moved to May 3. You get my point.

Video Obama extends lead over Clinton Feb. 20: Barack Obama wins Hawaii and Wisconsin, increasing his lead over Hillary Clinton. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports. Today show

The Clinton campaign has also successfully moved the burden of expectations to Obama, particularly for this entire month.

The problem for the Clinton campaign is that Obama has exceeded even the most wildly optimistic expectations set for him for February.

Can he do it again on March 4? Arguably, Obama has to; if he can’t put her away on March 4, when can he? That’s about the only way one could look at Obama’s nearly full glass and argue that there’s some emptiness there.

No matter what Clinton’s eventual fate is, there are number of questions many of us are going to be searching for, and it'll take months, if not years. 

How did the most prepared candidate for the presidency (and probably for the general election) end up so woefully unprepared for the primary campaign?

Why did they think this campaign should be run as a re-elect (circa ’96), rather than as a challenger race?

Besides Mandy Grunwald, is there a single veteran from the Clinton '92 campaign that remembered what running uphill was like?

Besides Howard Wolfson (who ran the DCCC) was there a single member of Clinton's inner circle who had ever successfully run a major national campaign before?

Sure, Mark Penn takes credit for Clinton '96, but what did he do for that campaign that was so remarkable? And what's he done since? Re-elects are one thing, but challenger races are another, and Penn's never won a big-time race from behind.

And now that Clinton's behind, who can she turn to?

There’s been a lot of re-arranging of the deck chairs on the Clinton campaign but there’s been no movement on message and strategy.

Hillary Clinton has chosen to stick with Penn and stick with the experience theme. It’s a tremendous show of loyalty, but it may eventually undermine her greatest argument against Obama: that she’s got the right kind of judgment and experience to run the country.

But, if she didn’t have the right judgment to figure out the right kind of campaign to run in 2008, then… 

I go back to an argument I made a few months ago in this space: the Clinton campaign is re-running a better version of John Kerry’s 2004 campaign and maybe, just maybe, she ran in the wrong year.

Successful presidential candidates always have the timing right and Obama and McCain both seem to fit the times better than Clinton, who may have been the perfect fit in 2004.

Of course, the burden is completely with Obama now -- and could very well be his nomination to lose.

Picking the president: The candidates Click to visit that candidate's MSNBC page or click the XML symbol for an RSS feed. John McCain                Barack Obama

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