An awful lot of people ran for president this year. Most have already been spanked and sent home.

Three still remain in the race, and presumably one will be president. But at the moment, all three look more vulnerable than invincible. In fact, it's easier to make the case against each of them than to make the case for any of them.

It's especially easy to make the case against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, in part because the two Democrats have been working so hard to make the case against each other — mostly through their surrogates and campaigners.

This long-running war has escalated in the weeks since the last primary (Mississippi on March 11). In the absence of actual voting events — the next is Pennsylvania's primary on April 22 — this crossfire becomes the only hot news available. And the media maw has grown wider and more ravenous and more insistent on daily feeding than ever before.

So we have Bill Clinton calling Hillary Clinton and John McCain "two patriots who love this country" and pointedly leaving out Obama. This prompts a retired general (who backs Obama) to compare Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy, the red-baiting bete noir of the 1950s. Then the Clinton operation releases a hit piece on the general from the American Spectator, the magazine that labored mightily to smear the Clintons throughout the 1990s. That in turn unleashes another tide of recriminations.

We also see James Carville, the consultant and media personality who rose with the Clintons in that era, outdoing himself by comparing New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to Judas after Richardson endorsed Obama.

Each day, the respective campaigns stage conference calls to exchange insults for the benefit of reporters — one more reason the schoolyard taunting dominates the campaign coverage even in a week when all three candidates made serious speeches about the economy and foreign policy.

But the wounding of the Democrats goes deeper than that, and their deepest cuts come from their own associations and assertions. The videos that made the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a media fixation have hobbled Obama with independents and with the blue-collar white Democrats he has struggled to reach throughout the campaign. If he survives to win the nomination, these videos will reappear in the fall as surely as yellow leaves.

For her part, Clinton has been burned by video of an airport landing in Bosnia that she had mistakenly recalled as taking place under sniper fire. The actual pictures of her — smiling amid welcoming children — undercut her self-projected image of international derring-do.

These missteps are all the more telling for both Democrats because their protracted struggle is sullying their respective images. The country has heard a lot about having the first woman or the first black nominated for president. But that inspirational note turns sour as the internecine knifings continue.

How long will it last? It is now clear that neither Obama nor Clinton can amass enough delegate votes to be nominated in Denver without winning a majority of superdelegates (automatic participants who are elected officials or party officers). Because the superdelegates can wait until the convention to declare, the nomination could be open until the balloting begins. That means the bloodletting could continue for another five months.

Clinton has a special problem. It now appears impossible for her to gain even a plurality of the pledged delegates (chosen in primaries and caucuses). So she must ask the superdelegates to reverse the judgment of the primaries and caucuses. This gets even harder if she also trails in the aggregated popular vote of all primary and caucus participants. And right now, without re-do votes in Michigan or Florida, she stands little chance of overtaking Obama in this measure, either.

If she somehow finds a way to sway the superdelegates and wrest the nomination from Obama, many of his supporters (especially among African-Americans and younger voters) may well shun her in November. Gallup also has found 28 percent of Clinton voters saying they would vote for McCain over Obama.

All these travails on the Democratic side help explain why most polls now show McCain running slightly ahead in November matchups.

Yet the obstacles between McCain and the Oval Office are imposing as well.

The first is the array of bad news greeting any Republican nominee in 2008. When a retiring president is south of 40 percent in the polls, his party's proposed successor loses — there have been no exceptions — and George W. Bush has been mired well below 40 percent for well over a year.

The public overwhelmingly believes the economy is now in recession and fears it will be a bad one. Once the public has taken this view, it generally takes a year or more to turn it around — even after the economy has begun to grow again. Ask George H.W. Bush about the recession of 1991 and how it cost him the presidency in 1992.

But the economy is just half the double whammy — with Iraq the other half. A large majority of Americans now regard the war as a mistake. Yes, a commitment of additional U.S. troops over the past year has improved security and economic conditions in Iraq. But political divisions remain and the comparative calm of recent months is fragile. If widespread fighting resumes, or if voters become impatient with the long occupation, Iraq alone could determine the election's outcome.

So the run from the convention to the White House would be steeply uphill for any GOP nominee. But McCain also has the special burdens of his age (71), medical history and reputation for being at odds with hard-line conservatives. The very qualities that endear him to many non-Republicans could cut into the base vote any nominee depends on in November.

On the other hand, seeking to allay concerns on the right may weaken his vaunted appeal to the middle. Just this week, McCain has taken an ultra-conservative stance on the economy (Clinton called it the return of Herbert Hoover) and taken up the cudgels for continuing the war, the single least popular element of the unpopular Bush presidency.

In sum, the weaknesses of each remaining candidate are now very much on display, while their strengths are at least temporarily eclipsed.

What happens in the weeks and months ahead will show which candidate can overcome the problems each now faces. Whoever does so will transform his or her current trials into a demonstration of new strength. And, in the end, that may well be what matters most to November voters.

This week, for the first time in five months, Senate floor business brought all the Senate's prodigal children home from the presidential campaign trail on a single day.

That's right, a series of high-profile votes on the budget resolution was magnet enough to bring the last three senators still alive in the White House contest back to town at once.

Republican John McCain of Arizona was on hand, having wrapped up the GOP nomination for president earlier in the month. McCain could scarcely miss a chance to vote for the amendment — sponsored by himself — that would eliminate legislators' favorite practice: earmarking funds in spending bills for special projects back home. McCain has made a lonely crusade against earmarks for many years, and now the issue is one of his best bridges to fiscal conservatives in the GOP voting base.

Democratic rivals Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York were also in the chamber, chatting up their old colleagues and making nice with each other for the C-SPAN cameras. With five weeks to go before the next campaign event in Pennsylvania (April 22), both could afford to spend some time on their day jobs. Besides that, it was a chance to chat up the Democratic senators from Florida and Michigan about disputed votes in those two states.

Despite months of missed votes, the three were not shunned as wayward siblings but welcomed as returning heroes. That is because the Senate considers this sort of absence quite acceptable and even honorable. After all, being a presidential hopeful is almost part of a senator's job description.

Consider that those warmly greeting the return of the three included several colleagues (Sam Brownback, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd) who until recently were competing against them in Iowa and New Hampshire (before their own presidential hopes played out).

There were others, of course, who had flirted with the idea of running for president this time around but demurred: Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on the GOP side, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Evan Bayh of Indiana among the Democrats.

An even larger number of incumbent senators could greet McCain, Obama and Clinton with rueful smiles and memories of their own White House campaigns in earlier eras: John Kerry and Joe Lieberman (2004), Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole and Orrin Hatch (2000), Richard Lugar and Arlen Specter (1996), Tom Harkin (1992) and Ted Kennedy (1980).

Beyond all these, there are many others in the chamber who have dreamed of presidential glory without declaring for the office in public. And yet again as many are dreaming that dream now with their hopes set on four, eight and 12 years from now.

Few indeed are those in the Senate who have never peered into the mirror and heard "Hail to the Chief" playing faintly in the distance. So it should surprise no one that these three illustrious absentees were objects of admiration and envy when they strode the Senate's deep blue carpeting again this week.

In days ahead, it is possible that McCain will make the Senate his base of operations, at least temporarily. He needs to re-engage with the issues of the day and benefits politically by doing so. He can make his forays into the country from here as well as anywhere.

Obama and Clinton are less likely to be visible in Washington. Their struggle goes on into Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky — among other states.

But there remains a chance that all these aspirant presidents will be drawn back to the reality of their current jobs for a major issue or crisis precipitated by the current president. This week George W. Bush reissued a 1995 order finding that a national emergency exists with respect to Iran and its threats to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the U.S.

The State Department called this reissue of the 13-year-old order completely routine. But the language recalls the preamble to the invasion of Iraq. So with the fifth anniversary of that war at hand, the coincidence of the order's renewal drew notice.

In the same week, Admiral William Fallon abruptly resigned as chief of the U.S. Central Command, which runs American military operations in the Middle East. It was widely known that Fallon opposed military confrontation with Iran and regarded the Bush administration's policy posture against Iran as aggressive and inadvisable.

Now this 40-year veteran is gone. And while his superiors at the Pentagon were at pains to deny any move against Iran was imminent, the impetus for the question was obvious. Add to all this the plan for Vice President Dick Cheney, the leading Iran hawk in the administration, to travel to the region to visit, among other places, Oman, the forward logistics hub for U.S. operations in the theater.

It may be an illusion, but all these signs point in one direction. Could the lame duck president who has been well below 40 percent approval for two years be planning a major rearranging of the landscape? Might he attempt to re-seize the initiative in his final months by striking Iran?

Such an attack would radically reshape the national debate and the 2008 presidential campaign overnight. Perhaps it's time all the senators who would be president spent more time back in the Capitol peforming their duties — including their responsibility to provide oversight of the executive branch in a time of war.

Hillary Clinton has called her primary victories this week "stunning," but their contribution to her delegate total continues to dwindle.

Senator Clinton won the Ohio primary with a healthy margin and squeaked past 50 percent in the Texas primary. She went on TV as the shiny new star of the 2008 campaign, the belle of the ball once again. All the glitter seemed legit at the time. She had cleared a high bar set by no less an authority than Bill Clinton himself, who said she had to win both of the big states on March 4 or it was lights out.

But even as the confetti fell in Columbus there were flaws with the Comeback Kid scenario. The delegate dividends from the states she won were surprisingly poor. She picked up just four delegates net in the Texas primary, one fewer than her net gain of five in tiny Rhode Island. Even her big win in Ohio gave her just 74 delegates to Obama's 65.

Subtract from this total the three delegates Barack Obama netted in tiny Vermont and Senator Clinton had gained just 15 delegates in the March 4 primaries. Given that she trailed by 152 pledged delegates as the day began, this shift did not seem nearly as impressive as the victory celebration and headlines implied.

And now it appears that even her net gain of 15 on the day may be cut nearly in half.

Because in Texas, one-third of the 193 delegates at stake this week were not awarded by the primary but by the caucuses held after the polls were closed. A record 4 million voters showed up for the primary, and a record 1.1 million also stayed for the caucuses at more than 8,000 sites around the Lone Star state. And in these caucuses, Obama won handily.

They call this hybrid the "Texas Two-Step," and it's had its fans and critics since invented in 1988. But this year it's really going to cause some howling.

The Texas Democratic Party says Obama's wider caucus margin will probably give him a 37-30 break in the delegates allocated from the caucuses. The primary had almost twice that many delegates at stake, but Clinton's primary margin there was much narrower. So when the two steps are all done, the projection is for Obama to emerge with 98 delegates to Clinton's 95.

So who won Texas?

The Clinton camp will point to the larger turnout in the primary to support their claim of victory. The Obama camp will say both events were valid and rules are rules.

But what's the bottom line if more Texans go to the convention in Denver pledged to vote for Obama than for Clinton?

Is it possible that instead of winning two big states, Senator Clinton won one-and-a-half?

Truth is, the Clinton campaign had anticipated exactly this kind of split decision in Texas. That's why efforts had been made to discredit the caucuses in advance. Her campaign complained that the caucuses were too small to be representative and too random in administration to be fair.

On caucus night, her campaign held a stormy conference call with reporters to say Obama forces were attempting to hijack the proceedings at specific sites. Similar complaints had been lodged against caucuses in other states in January and February, as the Obama campaign racked up consistent wins in delegate counts.

The Clinton campaign had much to fear in Texas. The state had once stood for her dominance in the presidential race, but after her 17-point drubbing in Wisconsin it began to symbolize her campaign's decline. Up by 20 in opinion polls, Senator Clinton saw the lead disappear. She sent in her crack operative from California, Averell "Ace" Smith, to reprise the ground organizing that preserved her 9-point victory in that state on Super Tuesday.

On March 4, Ace Smith & Company delivered a record turnout among Hispanics, who cast nearly one-third of the total vote and favored Clinton by about 2-to-1. It was enough for just over 50 percent of the vote, but not enough to make the caucuses ratify the the primary.

So the argument over "who won Texas" begins. And it's far more than just an academic debate.

One suspects the Clinton campaign would have carried on beyond this week even if she had lost the primary in Texas as well as the caucuses. Ohio was going to be all they really needed to claim a turnaround. (Note that she made her "going all the way" victory speech in Ohio before the results from Texas were clear).

More important, she and her retinue clearly believe they have finally found the key to the Obama riddle. After months of frustration, they loosed a flurry of blows and landed just enough of them to stall his momentum and grab some of their own.

Besides, most of the country will go on thinking that Senator Clinton collected a bonanza in Texas (and elsewhere) this week. So even if she didn't, and even if she did not quite meet her own goal of winning both big states, she got her momentum back for the first time in a month.

And at this point in the campaign, momentum is as important as message and money.

Long before the votes were counted -- or even cast -- in the primaries of March 4, Hillary Clinton and her campaign were building a case for her to stay in the race indefinitely.

She might not need it. If she rides a late shift in the polls to big wins in Texas and Ohio, she'll be the new star of the campaign, the belle of the ball once again -- The Comeback Kid.

But she couldn't count on that. So the case was really about staying in the chase even if she does not do well in both Texas and Ohio, the latest of her firewall states to come under siege.

In the two weeks since her 17-point drubbing in Wisconsin, Clinton heard people say she should pull out of the race unless she could reverse Barack Obama's fortunes with smashing victories of her own on March 4. Even Bill Clinton said his wife needed to win both.

This looked like a tall order even as he spoke it. In the last week of February, Hillary Clinton's lead in Texas dropped from the teens to a tie, while in Ohio her even more formidable advantage was reduced to single digits. It appeared that Obamamentum was rolling once again. Major tracking polls showed him pulling ahead nationwide for the first time.

It got gloomier still in Clintonville when she failed to break through in either of her debates with Obama, in Houston on Feb. 21 or in Cleveland on Feb. 26. Newspaper columnists penned summaries of her candidacy that read like obituaries. People wondered aloud who might be tasked with telling Hillary her run was done.

But from deep in the innermost of the Clinton campaign there came a response -- in fact, a flurry of responses. One was the ad about the White House phone ringing at 3 a.m. The pictures of sleeping children awakened all the deep-seated instincts of parental protectiveness and wariness. Remember the "security moms" who were pivotal to the outcome in 2004?

In response to this ad, Obama said good judgment was more important than experience, even at 3 a.m. But in this exchange, as in several over recent days, he was on the defensive, and it slowed his upward trajectory in the polls.

In the final hours before the voting, Clinton was reaching out on youth-oriented TV such as "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." And even as she tried on a hipper persona, her team was raising the heat on their opponent.

They wanted to know why Obama's economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told some Canadian officials the anti-trade sentiments they were hearing from Obama in Ohio were just political posturing. The Canadian prime minister was chided on the issue in the House of Commons in Ottawa. The embassy released a statement saying the meeting had been mischaracterized. But the issue had been on the TV news all day and the damage was done.

In addition, the Clinton camp made sure the media were flogged for not reporting more about Chicago financier Tony Rezko -- a former fundraiser for Obama -- on the day Rezko's trial began on federal charges of political corruption.

The Rezko story is not new, but most Americans have not stopped to focus on it. The same can be said of Obama's reluctance to honor his public funding pledge in the fall campaign, now that he has such a marvelous money machine of his own. The Clinton camp has stressed these issues for weeks, hoping to knock Obama's halo askew. Their effort has had scant success, but in these crucial hours, it's worth trying again.

It's also apparently worth it to Clinton to cast doubt on the results from Texas. While the state once epitomized her dominance, it has lately come to symbolize her decline. Inroads by the Obama campaign made the state a toss-up, and even endangered Clinton's big margin among Latinos. A fiasco in the Lone Star state could be her undoing.

So the Clinton camp went after the Texas Democratic Party's rules for apportioning delegates. Those rules are based on the number of Democratic votes produced in recent fall elections in each state senatorial district. The rules reward districts for party loyalty and penalize districts where apathy or crossover voting for Republicans are evident. Right now, that works out to a big boost for votes cast in African American districts and a steep discount for those cast in Latino areas.

And that could spell trouble for Clinton, especially if the post-primary caucuses (allocating a third of the pledged delegates) turn out to be another Obama coup d'etat.

So the campaign shifted from complaining about the complexity of these rules to complaining about the fairness, even implying it might sue. That kept the story bubbling and spread the notion that the Texas results might not be legitimate. Surely, Hillary Clinton could not be asked to drop out if she wins Ohio and only "loses Texas" because of some silly, unfair rules.

That will be half the argument. The rest will be that the country is just now waking up to Barack Obama, the man, in full. Is he deserving of all the adulation? Is he even trustworthy?

And having said that, the candidate will rest her case, and continue her campaign.