Team Clinton set the bar: win both big on Little Tuesday. They adjusted it a little lower: winning both small would suffice. When polls showed Obama taking a 4 point lead in Texas, but Clinton holding on to 6 pts in Ohio, they challenged Team Obama to prove leadership by taking both. To some, it sounded like a backpedal position so they might carry on after winning just one, even with no net delegate gain.

A Reuters/C-SPAN/Houston Chronicle(Zogby) poll released today shows the two locked as close as anytime since Super Tuesday. In Texas, it’s 45-43 for Obama, 4 for others, 8 still undecided. In Ohio, it’s 45-45, 4 for others, 6 undecided.

Fresh endorsements done, their strongest ads saved for last, they each will now exhaust themselves slugging it out these final three days. Still, I saw Obama was also in Rhode Island yesterday, fighting for the one state Clinton had firmly behind her. Such competition is intense and while their fans howl at each other, I remain pretty confident that there’s two such fighters who might yet right our country’s direction off the battered course it’s been on. So many lives squandered, so much truth hidden, so much treasury plundered by greedy weasels, incompetent jackalopes and worms that feed off rotted flesh.

Why should I complain that these two vie in a bloodless sport to gain a hand on the rudder? No matter who your bets are on, you know the victor has the greater task afterward, as do we all. Well past the first battle - winning November - comes a multiyear struggle just to reach a smoother sea.

Hundreds of thousands will still be mourning their worst losses. But the rest of us face prices yet that haven’t been fully paid. The cost, when a slight majority accepts fear and chooses incompetence from the least transparent public official in at least a third of a century. There’s no out for the slight majority who voted right in 2000 or the slight minority who voted right in 2004. In 2004, the 59 million people who had it right will be paying for all the blunder and plunder and wasted, wasted, tragically destroyed lives - for years to come.

And you’d better damn well be along to aid the first fight for November no matter who wins next Tuesday’s spectacle. They both have their imperfections, but then my mirror has it’s blemishes, too. Take a look at yours. See if there’s a fighter there or a lurking chump.

It’s a long way back, and most of us will ache except the fatted few who fed on the blood. The votes of neither of these two fighters are pure and in the end, the debate over percentages of purity will be maningless. They’re the tools we have to work with. We have to hope the majority in Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island and Vermont - and perhaps the rest of the primaries to come - will have a fine eye for selecting the strongest, most productive tool.

8% and 6% undecided is a lot with 3 days to go. The Monday polls should give us a preview. But the fight to restore our families, communities and nation is gonna take years, no matter how pure your own motives and deeds.

So suck it up, scream, or whatever. Then let’s get to it, because these two mainstagers can’t carry it alone.