The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton is giving off signals that her campaign for President could be nearing an end. It's hard to know if this veil of tears is just Hillary using the crying gambit -- as she did in New Hampshire -- in the pages of her hometown newspaper. But as she acknowledges in the article, running for President is a marathon from which the fittest political athlete emerges victorious.

The Times article helps highlight a critical difference between Clinton and Obama which may explain why Obama is proving himself to be the fitter of the two Democratic candidates. With Clinton, it appears that the voter's job is to help her to realize her ambitions by giving her money or votes. By contrast, Obama presents himself as the vessel for achieving voter's hopes. In short, with Hillary it's about what voters can do for her. And for Obama, it's about what he can do for voters.

The effect of these different approaches is that Clinton appears tired as she struggles to break an 11 state losing streak in the upcoming March 4th primaries. It's as though she needs the voters to give her the strength to keep going and that evidence of insufficient support saps her strength. By contrast, Obama looks like he hasn't really broken a sweat as he goes from victory to victory.

Barack Obama is the odds-on favorite -- for now -- to win both tomorrow's New Hampshire primary and the Democratic presidential nomination, according to traders at Dublin-based Trade Exchange Network Co., where people can buy and sell "shares" in political events.

The Illinois senator, who upset Hilary Clinton in last week's Iowa caucuses, stands a good chance of repeating his success in tomorrow's New Hampshire primary. The Trade Exchange's Intrade system shows Obama with a 90% change of winning the New Hampshire primary, to Clinton's 8.7% and John Edwards' 0.6%. Obama is being given a 66% chance of winning the nomination, compared with 32% for Hillary Clinton and 3% for John Edwards.

On the Republican side, traders are expecting John McCain to have an easy time beating back former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, with an 82% chance of victory to Romney's 14%, in line with conventional wisdom. Chances for Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appear somewhere between slim and none. McCain retains the edge to win the nomination, with a 4 percentage point lead on Giuliani and double-digit leads over the remaining candidates, online traders say.

Though the data is interesting, people should take it with a grain of salt -- no make that a truckload of salt. The political winds blow in many different directions as primary season heats up. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that pundits expected Clinton and McCain to win their respective primaries easily.