The biggest surprise of last night was not Obama's (real) double-digit win in NC, not the record turnouts, not even the nail-biter in Indiana. No, the biggest surprise was the bizarre narrative concocted by the MSNBC pundit team - a fantasy tale so intoxicating, so enticing to a punchy, tired newsroom that it even caught up Keith Olbermann. But not Maddow...
Now, to be fair, lots of people were caught off guard by Indiana, and it's hard (HARGD, to quote Hillary) sometimes to rewrite a speech at the last minute. Clearly, her interns had put together an Indiana victory speech, that's all they sent her into that sweaty little room with, and that's all she was able to deliver. Similarly, the pundits had already decided that if Hillary didn't get a big win, she'd start folding up her tent. They'd spun a corresponding narrative, and that's what they spouted, in spite of all evidence to the contrary in Hillary's speech.
The effect was that many of us were left wondering whether Matthews, Olbermann, and the B-team in the back had heard the same speech we did. What part of "Full speed on to the White House" had they mis-parsed?
Fortunately, there was one person on the B-desk who seemed to have been watching not only the speech, but the entire race preceding it. After allowing the rest of the team to churn out their new catch phrases - "mating dance", "gradual step down", etc. - Rachel Maddow came back with her own catch-phrase analysis: "Scorched earth".
Her point, simply, was that Hillary had abandoned any requirement for a reasonable path to the White House ages ago, and that there was no reason why she should adopt such a requirement now. Her plan, all along, has been to be the only one on stage when a "bus hit Obama" (Rachel was careful to throw in "metaphorically", but I think we know what she wanted to say).
So now it remains to be seen whether the rest of the "news" team can catch up and face the harsh reality that Hillary has become that bicycle kid from Better Off Dead and she won't rest until she gets her two dollars (or at least her two disqualified states...although at this point she might be better off with the two dollars....)
Update: WRT a couple of comments below about her finances (TWO DOLLARS), was anyone else horrified at Tim Russert's theory that HRC might stay in it to try and extort some payola out of Obama? Is that even legal? Is it really possible that part of my campaign contributions (TWO DOLLARS) will end up going to Clinton?