The Clinton campaign’s talking points for surrogates and supporters today strain hard to spin last night’s worse-than-expected performance into a victory over what they paint as an enormously advantaged Obama campaign.

“It is laughable that the Obama campaign tonight said that Senator Clinton was supposed to win Indiana, when the campaign itself had an internal memo predicting a seven-point victory in his neighboring state,” reads a document sent out to donors by finance director Jonathan Mantz. “Senator Obama himself called this the tie breaker state and we couldn’t agree more.”

The memo lists Obama’s advantages in the state, which included a spending advantage of 2-1 and the nearby Chicago media market — as well as the fact that Indiana is an open primary, which Clinton officials once spun as an advantage for their candidate. “Let’s be clear about what this loss means for Senator Obama - this is the first state bordering Illinois that Obama has lost. When it came time for him to talk directly to hard working middle class families about their economic concerns, he fell short.”

As a bonus, the talking points include notes on the campaign’s recent re-emphasis on Michigan and Florida — which, when added to the mix, put the magic delegate number for the nomination at 2209.

“Q: Will you take this fight to the credentials committee at the convention?” the campaign asks in a mock FAQ.

“A: We don’t think it will come to that. We believe Democrats think all fifty states should play a role in the process.”

Read the full talking points after the jump

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According to his prepared remarks, Senator Barack Obama was supposed to say, “I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on her victory in the state of Indiana.” Instead, Obama said, “I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana.”

Not a huge difference, but Senator Clinton’s margin in Indiana has narrowed as the returns have come in. The campaign says they’re not “holding our breath,” but wait for results to come in from places like Gary, IN, which is expected to be an Obama stronghold. The two Democratic candidates have not yet spoken, per the Obama campaign.

Prior to Obama’s speech, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Communications Director Robert Gibbs sounded confident in their North Carolina victory, saying it brought them closer to the finish line.

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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind - After a stinging defeat in North Carolina and a close win in Indiana, Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination has become that much harder tonight. North Carolina represented the last real chance for Clinton to shock the political world with an upset win, or what she herself called a “game changer.” What’s more, both states had large chunks of pledged delegates she needed to start closing the gap; her ability to make up ground in that metric is now severely diminished.

Aides insist that in even their rosiest scenarios, they would still lose North Carolina by 5. But with polls tightening over the last week, the endorsement of popular governor Mike Easley, and a heavy travel schedule in the state, expectations were building for a close contest — and some in the campaign even believed a win was possible.

And in Indiana, while the campaign says they came from behind and overcame the home field advantage Obama enjoyed in his home state’s next door neighbor. But polls over the last two weeks suggested she’d have a bit more breathing room here, instead of sweating out the result well into the night.

So how does the Clinton campaign make the best out of what looks to be a bad situation? Campaign officials say it comes down to demographics. While African Americans, young voters, and the more affluent went for Obama in higher numbers than usual, they say the blue-collar swing voters Democrats need in a general election went even more strongly to her. Those voters, they argue, are far less likely to choose Senator Obama in a match-up with John McCain than the coalition of voters Obama’s amassed.

That’s the case the campaign will be making to superdelegates in the coming weeks. As Major Garrett reports, Team Hillary is laying the foundation for a costly and public post-primary campaign to woo undecided party leaders, to include rallies, direct mail and paid advertisements directed squarely at the superdelegates upon whom their hopes now rest.

They’ll also revive their push to get the delegations from Michigan and Florida seated in full at the Democratic National Convention, a move that would close the pledged delegate gap significantly.

More immediately, Senator Clinton will soldier on. She has a fundraiser in Washington with her mother and daughter on Wednesday, and takes the campaign to three upcoming states on Thursday — stopping in West Virginia, South Dakota, and Oregon.

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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind — Indiana is known for two things in the sporting world: Hoops and the Indy 500. With Obama claiming a monopoly on basketball (except for her quaint stories about playing half-court 6-on-6 all girls ball in middle school), Hillary Clinton went the other route today — visiting the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to officially pick up the endorsement of female Indy Car driver Sarah Fisher.

She seemed genuinely impressed with the small race car — especially the high tech steering wheel and the fact that it runs entirely on ethanol, a fact that led her to exchange a high-five with Fisher.

Asked what brought her to the Brickyard, Clinton said she wanted to show her support for the trailblazing female driver. “We need to get on the track in America and get towards the finish line to change this country,” she said. “You want to go forward you put it in D. You want to go back you put it in R.”

Fisher helpfully pointed out that the car doesnt have reverse. Clinton replied “That’s right. It’s full speed ahead.”

Both women are hoping for a win in Indiana, but Sen Clinton hedged her bets on both races. “I never make predictions, I just try to do the best I can,” she said. “It would be like predicting who’s going to win the Indy 500 before it actually starts. we don’t know.”

Hillary did get a helping hand from Fisher, an Indiana native who said she’d voted that morning for Hilary and that she hoped both of them could make history. “That would be good, I would like that,” said Clinton, before rubbing the wing of the car for good luck.

“Between here and North Carolina, we’re just gonna be bouncing back and forth, so we are really gonna be working hard to try to get every vote in Indiana,” Barack Obama told reporters today. Indeed, the candidate is hitting the campaign trail in full sprint today – the day before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

With just a few hours of sleep, the candidate began his day with a round robin of pre-taped morning show interviews at 5:30 in the morning and then headed over to a construction site on the campus of the University of Evansville in Indiana. As the sun rose, he greeted construction workers as they filed on site and took a few questions from a gaggle of reporters.

“I think our chances are good,” Obama said, despite polls showing his onetime Indiana lead no longer. “I mean, we’ve had a great week of campaigning, we’ve seen people really asking themselves do they want more of the same or do they want a change in direction? That’s what this campaign’s been about from the start. We’re working as hard as we can and I desperately want every single vote here in Indiana and North Carolina and I want to have a chance to do something for folks who are having tough times,” he continued.

The candidate then headed over to the Evansville Labor Temple where a hodgepodge of union workers sat around what appeared to be a bar. No Bloody Mary for Obama, however, who ate eggs and a biscuit. “I’ve been losing weight on the campaign trail,” he said as he headed over to the buffet.

Before jumping on a North Carolina-bound plane, Obama told the union members, “This is gonna be a tight election here in Indiana. Every poll shows it is a dead heat. We need every single vote, so you guys are pretty persuasive - I need you to tell your members that this is something worth fighting for and that they need to come out and vote, and vote for me.”

Obama just landed in North Carolina, where he will  hold a town hall meeting and is expected to make a couple unscheduled retail stops. The marathon will continue when he flies back to Indianapolis for a nighttime rally and a late night stop by a local factory that will put Obama back at his hotel after midnight.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind — She’s up by about 5 points in the latest poll average on RealClearPolitics.com, but Hillary Clinton is casting herself as the underdog in the state — telling voters she’s hoping for a big comeback on Tuesday.

At a canvassing kick-off event in South Bend, Clinton told supporters “We came from so far behind in Indiana. We’re still the underdog.”

In fact, save for a brief period from April 25th through the 27th, Clinton held the lead in the RCP poll average for the entire month of April — though state polls were few and far between before that. She started much farther ahead than she is today; her lead dropped slowly but steadily until the middle of the month, when the polls started to stabilize.

The campaign, however, says it never believed public polling that had her ahead in March and early April — and points out that polls today are all within the margin of error. Aides also say they’ve been outspent by $2.4 million in Indiana, and that Obama has a huge advantage in the western part of the state that’s part of the media market in his native Chicago. Turnout in those districts could decide the race on Tuesday — which Clinton officials say is neck and neck.

Being the underdog has its advantages, mostly in energizing hardcore supporters. At a Democratic dinner in Indianapolis, Clinton took it a step further with a local flair — comparing herself to the iconic small-town basketball team from Milan, IN that inspired the movie “Hoosiers.”

“That great movie that was based on the story of Milan, the Milan miracle. I have always admired the grit of those players. Their determination to defy the odds,” she said. “They were counted out time and time again. But Americans love a good comeback. And we’re going to have a great comeback for America when I am your president.”

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SOUTH BEND, Ind — Running early for a change, Hillary Clinton decided to kill some time with some soft serve. The NY Senator and constant Indiana companion Evan Bayh brought the press corps along to a local DQ; he ordered an Extreme Chocolate blizzard, and she got the Snickers (to which she’s always been partial, she said).

This is no time for brain freeze, though: Clinton’s off to Indianapolis for a speech to a big Democratic dinner.

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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind — A star studded rally for Hillary Clinton featured actors Ted Danson and Sean Astin, director Rob Reiner, and even former President Bill Clinton — but in Indiana, stars don’t come bigger than native son John Mellencamp. The singer and Democratic activist took the stage on a chilly evening to sing what Clinton followers know as a new campaign theme song — “Our Country.”

Mellencamp played concerts for John Kerry in 2004 and endorsed John Edwards in 2007, touring with his campaign in Iowa. After Edwards dropped out, Mellencamp performed at an Obama event in Indiana. But Clinton aides say Mellencamp hasn’t endorsed a candidate — he’s merely committed to making sure a Democrat wins the White House in November.

The weekend before the Indiana primary on Tuesday, Barack Obama is traveling the state opting to meet and greet voters in intimate settings rather than rallying the troops at 15,000+ person rallies that he’s become known for.

Today Barack Obama campaigned at a park in Noblesville, Indiana, where several hundred people waited, many sitting on blankets in the grass. While Michelle and Barack Obama spoke to the crowd, daughters Sasha and Malia opted to spend much of their time playing with the other children in a nearby park, swinging and spinning around on a double-decker merry-go-round. “Faster, faster!” the girls chanted along with the other children.

It was appropriate that the message today was family as this was the first time the entire Obama family has appeared together on the campaign trail since Iowa. “We wanted to have a family day because our hope is that when we get into the White House is that the White House will be a place where children and family become the core of everything that happens out of that building,” Michelle told the crowd.

And noting Obama’s recent slied in the polls, she said, “But before we can get to the White House, we have to get through the primary right here in this state. And Barack Obama, as wonderful as we know he is, started out as the underdog in this race, and as far as I’m concerned, he will always be the underdog until the day he is sitting in the Oval Office. So that means we can’t take anything for granted. Not a thing. Everybody has to vote.”

Later, the family visited Barack Obama’s maternal grandparents’ home in tiny Kempton, Indiana, where they greeted about 20 or so locals behind the old, white home that sat in the middle of a sprawling cornfield. Perhaps hoping for a word-of-mouth campaign, the candidate really worked the small crowd as press watched from a distance, unable to see or hear much.

To cap off his day of small-time events, Barack Obama dropped by Great Skates skating rink in Lafayette. The candidate shook hands and mingled with the locals as ’70s and 80’s music blared from the speakers. Twice during the Village People’s “YMCA,” Barack Obama spelled the letters out with his arms over his head as one is inclined to do, and while his daughters Sasha and Malia dared to skate as the cameras documented their every fall, a wise Barack and Michelle Obama instead walked the rink donned in street shoes with their girls.

Obama took the microphone for just a few minutes after spending nearly an hour inside and noted, “I need all of you to go out there and talk to your friends and your neighbors and tell them that this is an extraordinary time and an extraordinary election and that the people of Indiana are gonna be able to make a decision about the future of our country. You can’t let that chance pass by.”

Tomorrow the candidate will drop by another family picnic in Fort Wayne and canvass an Indiana neighborhood before speaking at the state party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner.

“We have had a rough couple of weeks, I won’t deny that,” Barack Obama admitted to reporters today in Indianapolis. Since Reverend Wright’s public resurfacing last weekend, Clinton has been closing the gap in national and state polls while Obama has been putting out the flames of controversy.

It’s true that most voters don’t ask Obama about his former pastor - and today he noted if he talks about those issues important to Americans, “I think we have a terrific chance” of winning the Democratic nomination. In the meantime, he’s still facing questions from reporters about the effect his former pastor’s is having on his campaign.

When asked if he’d be upset if he lost Indiana “by a hair” because of Reverend Wright, Obama grinned. “I don’t think that what happened with Reverend Wright was helpful. Right? I don’t think there’s any denying that,” he said. “This will be something that they factor in to the mix. How it plays itself out, I can’t tell….I don’t spend a lot of time doing is obsessing about what ifs and should have beens. What I’ll do is we’ll see what happens on Tuesday and then we’re gonna keep on going to the next contest,” he shared.

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