The Adventures of Clinton, Obama and McCain! This cycles Presidential race has turned into an outsized soap opera with all sorts of fireworks on each evenings news episode. I am sure the American public eats this up with great relish. Each stumble, each success, is trumpeted to the far ends of the land by a media hungry for a messy affair, a stumble over words or a poorly directed verbal missile that hits the wrong target (Think of the Clintons' error with the black voters).

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will wind up at the door to the upcoming Democratic Party convention in a virtual dead heat. Both sides have perceived this as a very likely scenario. The program that will produce this is nothing more than an outcome of the changing numbers. Obama won a ton of small states (and a few larger ones)based on the demographics of the populations residing in those states. When he changes to fighting it out in the larger population states, the people he needs to win recede in numbers and the people that Hillary needs come to the forefront in large numbers. If she fails to pull large numbers in the remaining races in the bigger states, not much else will help her - not even the vaunted super delegates.

McCain will continue his suddenly vacant pathway toward the Republican convention. If he is smart, he will spend an enormous amount of time raising a boatload of money. He will need every dime of it during the upcoming election. Forget about promises to stay within public financing of campaigns. Either of his possible Democratic opponents will have a well funded campaign as the money sources on that side of the fence see this as their time to make some inroads in areas where they have been locked out of for 8 years. The Republican money people simply see this as a year when they can go "lite"! Not too many on the conservative side view this election cycle as anything short of a disaster,with losses of numbers in both the House and Senate and winding up with a black or a woman as president.

All three candidates are stressed out after a long term campaign to get to this point. Nobody dares to take time off, for a much needed break, for fear of losing momentum or allowing a wedge to be driven between voters in the demographics driving their campaign. This stress, lack of rest and continued attacks from one side or another will drive one of the candidates to make a mistake, sooner or later. The mistakes of previous candidates that ended their campaign have been well documented. One hopes the 3 candidates left can make it into the safe harbor of the convention without being crushed by some foolish mistake.

Learn more about this author, Fred Tolleson.
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