Success in politics is often about how a candidate defines it and what the public expectations are. Set the bar low and clear it; declare victory and call it momentum.

Governor Romney Romney tried it by calling his second place finishes in the earliest primaries and caucuses "silver medal victories" and invoking Bruce Jenner's Olympic decathalon championship.

Mayor Giuliani tried it by avoiding the early primary states, where defeat was certain, and by betting all his chips on the Florida Republican primary.

Romney stumbled and Giuliani burned.

Now, Senator Hillary Clinton has readjusted her campaign's self-declared objectives by announcing that she will recapture the momentum by building a firewall in the big states of Texas and Ohio, march on to victory in Pennsylvania and snatch the nomination at the Democratic National Convention this August in Denver.The Clinton camp knows that victories in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania will be important for the Democrat's super-delegates. Big, blue collar, states like Pennsylvania and Ohio are fundamental to the success of the Democratic Party in national general elections. Democrats don't win national elections unless they sweep the older industrial states.

Those are the kinds of considerations that super-delegates, for the most part experienced campaign veterans and party bigwigs, were created for. By redefining expectations, Sen. Clinton is attempting to focus the attention of the super-delegates entirely on the November election calculus and urge them to overlook the passing primary results.

Sen. Obama holds a small lead in both the popular vote and delegate count. He's got a 700,000-vote margin in the almost-nationwide popular vote (Democratic Chairman Howard Dean's declaration that Florida doesn't count still holds, at this point) and Obama counts 1,302 delegates on his side compared to Clinton's 1,235 pledged and committed delegates.

Clinton shouldn't be counted out...yet.

Polls in Wisconsin and Hawaii suggest that Obama will win this week's contests, extending his streak of primary and caucus victories. Those victories will solidify Obama's status as the clear front-runner; a dangerous position to hold against team Clinton, especially during a two-week hiatus for primary contests and a pause in weekly victories that have demonstrated significant momentum for his candidacy.

Team Clinton can be expected to use the next couple of weeks to exploit the sense of buyers' remorse that seems to be right below the surface of Obama-mania by portraying the front-runner as an, empty, albeit good looking, suit.

The Clinton operation will try desperately to reverse what has become a flood of unflattering media coverage fueled by comments by Clinton insiders fretting over the state of the campaign and by the mounting criticism of columnists like the New York Times' Frank Rich and the Washington Post's Richard Cohen who, if not fully over the moon about Obama, are preparing Hillary Clinton's political obituary.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have lived near the edge and faced adversity for most of their joint political careers. Their recipe is as predictable as it is proven -- bite the lower lip, wag a finger and shed a tear or two to demonstrate sincerity, vulnerability and contrition while at the same time completely demonizing the opposition.

Their combined success has relied on their ability to make people like Newt Gingrich and Kenneth Starr look like Neanderthals and to make women like Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinski look like delusional women from a double-wide.

Will the Clinton campaign risk trying to paint Obama and his supporters as delusional? Will they even dare try to Neanderthalize him?

It is hard to say, but the Clinton's are very good at what they do. The proof is in ther victims who are scattered along the shoulder of America's political highway.