The latest metamorphosis of Hillary Clinton’s message is a chilling ad depicting children sleeping peacefully and an ominous voice-over saying, “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep … But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing … Your vote will decide who answers that call.”

The biggest problem with this ad? Barack Obama’s effective response:

We’ve said before that rumors of Clinton’s demise had been exaggerated. Now the campaign’s spreading those rumors itself in a tactical swirling of the drains.

The cringe-inducing memo below, which landed in the inbox this morning, is the type of desperate plea that is sure to read like a hard punch in the gut if you’re a Clinton supporter. So if that’s where your allegiance lies, you might want to look away.

In the memo, Clinton’s campaign attempts to set expectations sky-high for Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas, saying Obama is outspending them 2-to-1 and has worked so hard that anything less than a decisive margin of victory is a loss.  

The problem with that case is that it is … well … lame.

First, it’s a reminder of Obama’s massive war chest, won with an unprecedented number of small donations from first-time contributors. 

Second, it’s hard to see how inviting a cost-benefit analysis of the two remaining Democratic campaigns would show Clinton in a better light than Obama. Such an exercise naturally brings up Clinton’s remarkable resources, the political machine she inherited from her husband, the incredibly tireless stumping on her own part – and what all that effort has gotten her.

To: Interested Parties
From: The Clinton Campaign
Date: Friday, February 29, 2008
RE: Obama Must-Wins

The media has anointed Barack Obama the presumptive nominee and he’s playing the part.

With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The Obama campaign and its allies are outspending us two to one in paid media and have sent more staff into the March 4 states. In fact, when all is totaled, Senator Obama and his allies have outspent Senator Clinton by a margin of $18.4 million to $9.2 million on advertising in the four states that are voting next Tuesday.

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and - of course - making speeches.

If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there’s a problem.

Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear:

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

We were supposed to watch MSNBC for the first time give Barack Obama the frontrunner treatment. While Obama got some tough questions on public financing and Louis Farrakhan’s uninvited endorsement, this wasn’t his night in the hot seat.

Hillary Clinton was pressed right out of the gate on health care and NAFTA. Asked Tim Russert of Obama, “how were her attacks on you unfair?”

Clinton tried to take a stand, however misplaced it was. She noted that the first questions always seem to be posed to her (something that could be construed as an advantage, no?) and awkwardly referenced the SNL skit about the media’s doting over Obama.

“I just think it’s curious that I keep getting the first question,” Clinton said. 

Perhaps most striking was how Obama got a pass on the only foreign policy quiz question of the night: who is Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor? Clinton stumbled over the answer, Dmitri Medvedev (so did John McCain in a Herald interview). She said something like “Medvedevo.” No way to know whether Obama had even an inkling of the Russian’s name. He got to answer second.

Barack Obama violates the rules of engagement tonight by beginning his speech in Houston while Hillary Clinton is still stumping in Youngstown, Ohio.

“They decided to Big-Foot the Clinton campaign,” said NBC’s Tim Russert. 

The networks all predictably cut away to Obama, with MSNBC gushing that the speech is to be “extemperaneous.” Imagine that.

Clinton appeared incredibly uncomfortable. Her words told one story, and her grimacing face another. But her words betrayed the state of her campaign too. What strategist imagined it would be a good idea to have her remind the crowd about her recent personal loan to the campaign? And to plug her own Web site as if it were her first day on the trail?

Update: Obama has location flub, referencing the slump in jobs “here in Youngstown, Ohio.”

He also says his “faith in the American people has been vindicated” with this campaign.

A search for the terms “Obama” and “Patrick” and “plagiarism” gets more than 200 hits on Google news today. But revelations about the extent to which Barack Obama and Bay State Gov. Deval Patrick share campaign rhetoric appears to have gotten little in the way of critical network coverage. So does the story have enough staying-power and punch to hurt Obama?

Hillary Clinton’s operatives want the story to be about allegations of outright plagiarism. But that charge is deflated by several facts: Obama’s said on the record that he borrows from Patrick, and the two share the same political strategist/wordsmith, David Axelrod.

Clinton herself, however, seized the issue more deftly yesterday by challenging Obama on authenticity, the very being of his campaign (via The Swamp):

“The real issue is if you’re entire candidacy is about words, they should be your own words. And you may know that both Deval Patrick and Sen. Obama have the same consultant and adviser, who is apparently putting words in both of their mouths. And I think that’s a serious question to be raised because, obviously, we’re asking the people of Hawaii to hire us for the toughest job in the world.”

She channeled her inner-bulldog. But it may be too late.

Whether the controversy over Obama’s line-borrowing hurts his candidacy is likely now in the hands of Wisconsin voters. His campaign has set expectations so high in Wisconsin even a razor-thin loss might be partly attributed to this latest debacle: