KEY POINTS:
Hillary Clinton won comeback victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island yesterday which kept her campaign for the Democratic nomination alive. Below is some reaction from around the world to the results.
'Most worrying for Obama is that voters seemed to turn against him in the last
few days - perhaps as a result of the mini-scandals that have erupted around him. There is also a slight sense that the world - the media certainly and even the voters - is slightly falling out of love with the charismatic Illinois senator. That will make for a nerve-wracking few weeks and possibly months for him.'
- Gerard Baker, The Times
'An important question is whether the results will influence the 800 or so superdelegates ... who had been moving strongly in Obama's direction ... Clinton must stop that erosion in the coming weeks in order to remain mathematically viable ... If Obama continues to pick up superdelegates and claims wins - as expected - in Wyoming and Mississippi over the next week, the delegate math becomes more and more difficult for Clinton.'
- Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
'The results bring fresh questions about [Obama's] electability in key swing states like Ohio that Democrats are eager to carry in the November general election ... Simple math is still her enemy. She needs to use [yesterday] to persuade superdelegates ... to stop abandoning her for Obama. Or, at least, stop abandoning her long enough for Clinton to damage him with a line of attack, goad him into a colossal gaffe (or watch him make one on his own) or rely on the media to unearth a campaign-altering scandal about him. But it is not clear if her performance in Ohio was enough to give Clinton ... a real chance for a fresh assessment before superdelegates flee.'
- Patrick Healy, the New York Times
'The delegate count is still strongly against her. The math is the math is the math. It is almost/virtually/essentially/fundamentally impossible for her to win the battle of pledged delegates ... Clinton still can't win this without persuading a sufficient number of superdelegates to go against the overall will of the voters. But [Obama] does have to find a way to seize the offensive again. The Clinton campaign has shown that they'll hit hard and nothing is out of bounds. The Obama campaign can't quite go there. A man attacking a woman risks looking like a bully and making Clinton look ``vulnerable', which is her sweet spot ... A couple of Clinton's basic themes have gone inexplicably unchallenged. She really shouldn't be able to get away with counting 35 years of her adult life as valuable experience while reducing Obama's adult life to ``one speech'.'
- Michael Tomasky, the Guardian