Hillary Rodham Clinton began her presidential quest armed with talent, tenacity, fame, money, connections and a team that knew how to win.

Many people believed her victory in the Democratic nomination battle was a sure thing. Her ultimate failing may have been in believing it, too.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was just warming up the crowd in a cramped and muggy middle school gymnasium when she switched her pronouns.

"All the kitchen table issues that everybody talks to me about are ones that the next president can actually do something about," Clinton said Sunday night, "if he actually cares about it."

The word hung in the air only for a moment.

He's a Republican, for starters. He describes himself as "older than dirt." And he makes no apology for an Iraq war that is especially unpopular on college campuses.

Doesn't sound like a recipe for winning the hearts of young voters. And yet John McCain has vowed to make a serious play for the 18- to 29-year-old crowd that's often identified with "Obama-mania."

Did U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain vote for President George W. Bush in 2000?

Liberal Internet blogger Arianna Huffington says McCain told her he did not. But the Arizona senator says he did vote for Bush, a fellow Republican, in 2000 and campaigned for him all over the country after his own attempt to win the party's nomination failed.

No constituency is more eager to see a woman win the presidency than America's feminists, yet — despite Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic candidacy — the women's movement finds itself wrenchingly divided over the Democratic race as it heads toward the finish.

Word of what some on Capitol Hill fear may become the next major congressional scandal is beginning to leak out.

The Justice Department apparently is investigating allegations that lawmakers illegally have used their staffs for campaign purposes or to handle such personal chores as cleaning legislators' homes and fetching their dry cleaning.

It appears that Barack Obama has survived a tough couple of weeks. In the words of some, he's shown that "he can take a punch."

But, frankly, I think Senator Obama is still getting kid gloves treatment from a press corps that tilts left.

Since when did "elite" become a pejorative word?

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she won't be swayed from her idea of a summer gasoline-tax holiday by "elite opinion," meaning the opinion of every serious economist who's looked at the proposal.

Liberal gadfly Michael Moore chides the Democrats for "doing the bidding of the corporate elite in this country."

Hillary Clinton's faltering campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination is out of cash, short on hope and deeply in debt.

She has lent her campaign more than $11 million and may have to fork over more if she wants to stay in the raise.

Which brings up two questions: Can she afford to stay in the fight and, if she does, can she ever get her money back?