Right before Iowa, I wrote:

On the Democratic side, there's a fair amount of satisfaction with all the of leading candidates.

There's little appetite for a dragged out, bloody contest. The first person to break out the pack should easily generate a bandwagon effect, unify the party and coast to the nomination.

Not quite right. But there was some underlying truth.

There still is little appetite for a dragged out, bloody contest. And there is no appetite for a brokered convention.

Why Sen. Clinton is not in Wisconsin tonight is nonsensical. That primary is next week. Ohio and Texas, her alleged firewalls, are on March 4.

The Wisconsin polling, while sketchy, would indicate the state is at least competitive.

And if Obama wins his 10th straight primary after Wisconsin, it is extremely difficult to see why Ohio and Texas will essentially decide to have a brokered convention.

The assumption has been that those states are demographically suited to her, but those assumptions were challenged in VA and MD and Maine.

Of course, the media treatment may get rougher for Obama, now that he will be seen as the frontrunner. And there's another debate next week where a dramatic moment could happen. But he's kept poise under fire so far.

Further, it appears that Obama is resolving lingering doubts about his depth on substance.

Last week I argued he could use a little more wonk in his stump, but not too much to weigh down the energy of his crowds.

From what I've been able to see (i.e. his victory speech delivered in Wisconsin), he's doing that.

Clinton can still talk more with more fluidity when it comes to policy, which can lend her a perception of deeper substance. But if people are getting a sense of Obama's policy knowledge as well, that advantage is minimized.

If both are seen as sufficiently presidential, and similar on substance, the focus (rightly or wrongly) moves to electability. And winning, especially in Red states, begets more winning.

Final observation: I had thought Clinton's attacks on Obama's health care plan, while overstated in my view, were having an impact. But there's no evidence of that in the recent results.

One wonders if the Clinton campaign had not gone so deep in the gutter earlier, would an attack on policy grounds been accepted as more credible.

UPDATE: Clinton is heading to Wisconsin on Saturday and campaigning through Tuesday. Seems late to me for what could well be the make-or-break state.

UPDATE 2: Wisconsin's Faithful Progressive concurs: "truly bizarre"