AUSTIN – After Hillary Rodham Clinton's big win in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama snared a majority of superdelegates. Drip.

She won Indiana, but all the pundits said she had lost the race. Drip.

She trounced him in West Virginia and two more superdelegates went for him. Drip.

Then Wednesday, John Edwards and NARAL-Pro Choice America endorsed Mr. Obama. Waterboarding.

Mrs. Clinton's fire is being doused, and now even the most ardent Hillary supporter knows the tide has turned.

Mr. Obama took the stage in Grand Rapids and told Michigan he was sorry he hadn't been there to campaign earlier. And so, he told the enthusiastic crowd, he "won't be fooling around."

Then he brought in John Edwards, who represented the hardworking, low-wage, largely white constituency that Mrs. Clinton has counted and courted, and the Southern populist declared his late but welcome endorsement for the other guy.

The national abortion rights group – representing yet another pillar of her constituency – endorsed Mr. Obama, causing an outcry from other women's groups angered not just over the disloyalty – political jockeying is to be expected – but the timing.

"I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton ... to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process," said Ellen Malcolm, president of the political action committee EMILY's List.

And so the trek to the Montana and South Dakota primaries appears to be on a leaky boat heading out of the port of If on its way to the town of When.