Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle said Clinton's pitch to superdelegates has been that she can win the popular vote, but that was undercut when Obama netted more than 200,000 popular votes in the Tuesday contests.

"The math just got very tough for her after last night," Doyle said. "I think most of us out of respect for her are content to wait a little longer. ... The absolute best way for this to end is for the candidates to end it, not the superdelegates. That's the ending we all dream about every night."

WASHINGTON — When long-haul trucker Rusty Wade pulled his rig into a Missouri truck stop last week, he noticed something strange.

Of the 50 or so 18-wheelers parked in the lot, only five had their engines idling.

"That's only because of the high price of fuel," said Wade, an independent owner-operator from Brundidge, Ala. "A year ago there would only be about five that weren't running."

In a New York Times/CBS News poll in late February, Obama was defeating John McCain 50 to 38. Two months later, the Times/CBS poll had McCain and Obama tied. The poll that came out yesterday showed Obama reopening a lead over McCain — but clearly over this period a vulnerability for Obama was exposed.

And when Obama’s 12-point lead over McCain was evaporating, Hillary Clinton was moving from a tie in February to a five-point advantage — and now that has widened further.

With its 45- and 90-degree angles and one color per subway line, the 1972 subway map by Massimo Vignelli was divorced from the cityscape, devoid of street or neighborhood names. It was criticized because its water was not blue and its parks were not green. Paul Goldberger called it “a stunningly handsome abstraction” that “bears little relation to the city itself.”

Now it turns out that Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his own voice.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season.

For the last year, advisers had been reluctant to highlight him playing basketball, thinking it could raise racial stereotypes or make him look less serious. But in Indiana, where basketball is sacrosanct, Mr. Obama scored four baskets and his team won the 20-minute game, a far better showing than his much-derided bowling outing in Pennsylvania.

"She is making other women want to be president,'' Annabel said of Mrs. Clinton.

At every turn, the dater finds himself flattered: advice books, reality television shows, an infinite selection of white striped shirts to wear untucked over jeans.