Hillary Clinton's comeback since Wisconsin and Hawaii has been impressive by any measure. But let's all put this into context. Her campaign lost its footing in Iowa and has been in a downward spiral ever since. She, her husband, and her staff have made every possible mistake they could until finally they decided to go all out negative and attack Barack Obama with everything they had, acknowledging that he was a formidable opponent but attacking him on his strengths, his judgment, a classic negative campaign tactic perfected by Karl Rove. It is no wonder that Rove is one of her biggest fans and throws rose pedals her way whenever he has a chance.
The question is, what has Senator Obama's strategy been through all of this, does he have a strategy, and will it work. Let's for the moment give him the benefit of the doubt. He's earned it, after all. He's been playing the Clintons and their strategists against themselves for two months now without having to break a sweat and without going negative himself. He's laid trap after trap, allowed them to inadvertently go negative and reveal their over-confidences and justifications for loss after loss, and let the press do the dirty work of exposing their weaknesses and their foibles. 
And let's also be clear - this is not a case of the press favoring Obama. Obama's already started the reverse spin on that story after letting it build up to a hot air induced crescendo. It's Obama out-playing the Clintons and the press attacking a weak candidate. That's the job of the fifth estate. It should be the media that hounds a candidate when they lie, prevaricate, rationalize, and distort. The press wasn't hard on Nixon; Nixon was a thief and a liar. 
Where do we start? Fairy tale, Obama prefers Republican ideas, hope is naive, Obama's win in North Carolina is just like Jesse Jackson's, just words, plagiarism, not ready on day one, leaving out 15 million, the Clintons' joint ticket, Bill's anger, Bill's narcissism, Hillary hiding under Bill's shadow, 35 years of experience, attacking on Rezko in light of travel-gate, Monica-gate, and the Rose Law Firm, the celestial skies, the candidate of a thousand faces - all of these aspects of Hillary Clinton's campaign have been worthy of derision and have justifiably attracted the skepticism of not just the press but the voting public. Senator Clinton has deserved the negative press attention and Senator Obama simply has reiterated the same campaign again and again. 
No-one really wants to see another four or eight years of the Clintons if we can help it. That is not a media-inspired meme - that is a truly American reaction against dynasties (and a lesson learned the hard way through the Bush years) and one informed by the genuine desire for change. In addition, Obama's ideas are sound, he has written two inspiring, timely books, he has proven he can go head to head against Hillary Clinton as well as a strong Democratic field and again and again, he has out-smarted them and played the long game. Add to that his incredible organizational skills, fund-raising, and his ability to inspire followers and attract new voters - all of which adds up to a reasonable conclusion that he is a credible candidate. And he doesn't give a bad speech.
All of which is to say, if Obama has something up his sleeve, if he has anticipated a last-ditch, sand in your eyes, throw everything at you that you possibly can attempt by Hillary Clinton to regain the momentum in what is her natural milieu, working class, industrial heartland Ohio, don't count him out. In fact, in my opinion, what we have seen in the past two weeks in the lead up to Texas and Ohio, was an Obama rope-a-dope.
Obama, like Mohamad Ali, is a political natural. And he plays the long game. He knows that Clinton is a formidable opponent. And he knows that eventually, even the Clintons will realize that they can't fool all of the people all of the time and that they would have to throw something with some merit at him. He waited to see what that was. It wasn't the debate. It wasn't "come meet me in Ohio". And it wasn't Nafta-gate - a mess all his own. It was 3:00 am. He waited to see what the last tactic would be in Clinton's deck of a thousand cards. 
Obama knows he can beat only Clinton if he takes her seriously - one more thing that differentiates him from her. He had rebutted all of the other attacks and waited to see what the last one was. 3:00 am in the morning is the last card in the Clinton deck. Not surprisingly, its a card loaned from her from John McCain. It's the same card he'll be playing against Obama, no doubt, in the general election and it's one that Clinton is laying claim to as her own as well. Senator McCain can't play that card against her, she's saying, with a bit of an assist from her Republican colleague.
We'll see what Senator Obama's response is. My thought is that the tv ad rebuttal that we saw only hours after Senator Clinton's ad came up last week was a necessary shot over the bough but that one that only represents an initial response. Senator Obama will have to have much more to say on this issue. And if he does, Senator Clinton will no doubt see the last of her attack-tics laid by the wayside.