Yesterday brought a momentous–but expected–set of victories for Barack Obama and John McCain, who swept the Beltway Primaries to win Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

On the Republican side, there really isn’t much left to say. McCain is winning in a landslide, and he’ll probably end up with the nomination. Ron Paul is–and always has been–a joke, and he’s basically given up to focus on keeping his Congressional seat. Huckabee is loved by the Christian conservatives but hated by everyone else, and his window to the nomination has already closed. Unless there’s some major, unforeseen change, we will be running against John McCain.

On the Democratic side, Obama has overtaken Clinton in the delegate race, making him the undisputed front-runner. This spells major trouble for the once-dominant Clinton campaign.

There are a lot of factors working in Obama’s favor; first is the dominance of John McCain. In an open primary–which allows anyone to vote in any party’s primary, though they can only vote in one–independents often play a major role. In this race, independents prefer Barack Obama on the Democratic side and John McCain on the Republican side. Since McCain is strongly favored to become the GOP nominee, independents aren’t wasting their vote in the Republican primary–instead, they’re opting to vote in the Democratic primary, giving Barack Obama a boost. This headline from CNN says it all:

Exit Polls: Independent voters break for Obama and against McCain

Second, Clinton is running a traditional campaign–she’s focusing her efforts on just a handful of influential states. Thus, she wins major contests like Massachusetts and California, but loses the majority of states–in fact, out of the 35 primaries that have been held, Obama has won 25. Hassan Nemazee, a national finance chair for the Clinton campaign, says it best:

“If we had won Iowa and New Hampshire, as we had anticipated, projected, et cetera, you would not have been in a situation in which you are losing all of these small states—because we didn’t put any resources in those small states,” he said. “Obama, on the other hand, put resources in these small states.”

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“You needed to have a Plan B, and Plan B was just doing what we are doing right now rather than having resources in the small states,” he said. “We basically ceded every one of these small red states that he has racked up victories in. And the reason that he has racked up victories at this level isn’t because he was so much more well received, or because his message was any better; it was because we didn’t put any resources in there. We weren’t campaigning there. We didn’t have anybody in Utah, in Idaho, in the Dakotas. In Alaska.”

Nobody predicted the primary would turn out this way, but the Obama campaign was prepared–they were ready for a drawn-out battle across a number of states. Clinton, on the other hand, banked on winning the nomination early on, and thus didn’t plan after Super Tuesday.

Clinton’s focus on a handful of states represents the old way of campaigning, and it won’t bode well if Clinton wins the nomination–Presidential campaigns have to be waged everywhere, not in just a few swing states; we can’t cede any ground to the Republians.

Meanwhile, Obama has been implementing a 50-state strategy, focusing his efforts on as many states as he can. That’s the way that the eventual candidate has to campaign, and that’s the way we’re going to beat John McCain–by fighting in every single state, by not giving up anywhere.

In the wake of Obama’s streak of victories, there have been several developments. Despite Clinton’s threats to boycott NBC debates over NBC’s David Shuster saying that Chelsea Clinton was “pimped out” by the campaign, Clinton has agreed to a February 26th NBC debate in Ohio. This reversal seems to represent Clinton’s latest strategy–she has a TV ad in Wisconsin hitting Obama for not agreeing to more debates (ostensibly a reference to his refusal to engage in a FOX News debate Clinton signed on to).

Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent has this to say about Clinton’s ad:

The ad would seem to cement Obama’s status as the race’s front-runner. Key line from the narrator: “Maybe he’d prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions.”

The Hillary camp is hungry for as many debates as possible with Obama, in the belief that it plays to her advantage to have them go head-to-head over the issues, rather than letting him largely frame the race from the stump with his superior oratory. This line seems to reflect that.

Clinton’s strategy is risky–I can’t imagine that spotlighting her willingness to work with FOX News will help her among primary voters, donors or activists. In addition, every negative attack she launches against Obama plays into his strategy of portraying Clinton as engaging in–as he calls it–”the politics of personal destruction.” Finally, Obama is well-liked overall; if Clinton attacks him too much, too hard or over something frivolous, it could backfire and hurt her (see South Carolina).

Clinton’s troubles have been exacerbated by an exodus of staffers from the campaign–Mike Henry, the Deputy Campaign Manager, has left, as have Kevin Thurman and Crystal Patterson, two key members of Clinton’s internet team.

Overall, Clinton needs to start gaining ground, and fast–while this is nowhere near over, Clinton’s window to the nomination has grown somewhat smaller. Clinton’s firewall is Ohio and Texas, which go to the polls on March 4th.

If Clinton loses both states, there will be huge amounts of pressure on her to cede the primary to Obama; a brokered convention would be disastrous and–with John McCain sewing up the GOP nomination–Democrats will need a candidate to rally behind. Even if Clinton wins one contest and loses the other, it’ll be a clear sign that she’s struggling and she might not be able to pull out enough victories after that to become the nominee. If Clinton pulls it out and wins both contests, there will be a long, hard fight to the finish, and whoever wins the most pledged delegates will probably win the nomination.

I don’t mean to be overly down on Clinton–she’s run a strong campaign, and she’s withstanding an opponent who would have overwhelmed anyone else. Nor am I counting her out–this primary is far from over, and Clinton could end up winning this thing handily. But it’s undeniable that she’s in a bad position right now, especially if you consider the position she was in at the beginning of this race, or even the position she was in before Super Tuesday. Clinton will have to work hard to make up the ground she’s lost, but it’s certainly possible.

Before Ohio and Texas, though, Wisconsin and Hawaii will go to the polls on the 19th. Obama is expected to win HI–since he spent several years of his childhood there–while WI is still up in the air. If Obama sweeps those elections, though, look to Ohio and Texas to be the deciders in this election.