INDIANAPOLIS - "This was supposed to be Hillary Rod ham Clinton's ticket back into the game.
Instead, it was a one-way ticket home.
Her Hoosier Hail Mary pass in the final minutes of the last quarter of this endless primary landed flat into the turf.
She needed a huge win here to show superdelegates and party big wheels that she is the only one who can carry the Democratic flag to victory in the November election.
Only with a solid win of, say, 8 points or better could she have told them that she's the one Democrat who could keep voters in crucial white working-class states from defecting to John McCain in the fall.
Her 2 percent margin of victory is as good as a loss.
Only with big numbers could she have said that she's the sole candidate tested, vetted and strong enough to survive the political warfare that has made mincemeat of Barack Obama and his preacher these past few weeks.
She could have pointed to Ohio and Pennsylvania - but she needed Indiana, a state that was hers to lose.
Catholics in South Bend, blue-collar workers in the cities and old-style Democrats in rural Indiana should have given Clinton a decisive victory.
The state's demographics were tailor-made for a big Clinton win, and she enjoyed the backing of the state's leading Democrat, Sen Evan Bayh. He put his popularity and his organization to work for her.
She even had Rush Limbaugh urging Republicans to vote for her to keep the donkey squabble going on as long as possible.
Obama was outspending her in Indiana, but nothing like the truckloads of cash he dumped in Pennsylvania.
She campaigned aggressively.
When Obama got caught publicly defending the federal gas tax at a time when gas prices are tickling $4 a gallon, Clinton pounced.
It may have been cheap opportunism and cynical populism, but there's no disputing that it became a prime issue for voters here.
Clinton aired several ads highlighting the gas-tax issue and mentioned Obama's opposition to a tax "holiday" at almost every stop.
And she campaigned smart.
As her opponent got ripped to shreds over his insane preacher, she stepped out of the way and let him bleed.
After a time, Clinton even said that voters had heard enough about Wright and that it was time to move on.
Polls heading into yesterday's voting were hopeful for her.
One showed Clinton with a 19-point lead in northwest Indiana, despite being in the suburbs of Obama's hometown of Chicago.
As Clintons always do, she bounded out onto the stage here last night, claiming some absurd victory, well before all the votes were counted and her margin of victory has shrunk from earlier in the evening.
When she finished her speech, the music kicked up, but the confetti machines malfunctioned, spewing more smoke than colorful paper.
Hoosier State voters spoke, but they didn't say superdelegates should do anything dramatic like stripping the nomination from Obama in order to save the party in November.
Indiana will prove decisive, but not in the way Hillary Clinton was hoping."
I'm watching the returns from Indiana and seeing her lead dwindle and dwindle, and here she tromps onstage and declares that this is IT...move over Michelle Obama, for it is I who'll be picking the new White House drapes.
Just as hubby lied and told others to lie, Hillary is far more comfortable being disingenuous so it shouldn't be much of a surprise catching her bad acting, but there's a reason we go to the circus, or tune in on TV rather than just reading all about it.
Watching the clowns is far better.
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