End Of The Line

Kind of surprising to see The Politico get down to reality, especially considering how their bottom line is negatively affected by such clear-eyed analysis.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

They go on to talk about how the traditional media doesn't want to call the race because a) it'd be bad for ratings, b) they don't want Howard Wolfson yelling at them, and c) if Obama woke up in a crackhouse on 103rd and MLK on the South Side and Clinton soared to victory, they wouldn't want to have been wrong. So it comes down to cowardice in the face of truth.

I don't have a problem with Clinton trudging on through Pennsylvania: as we near the final weekend to register to vote and be eligible for the primary, we've seen the Party add 111,227 new voters to the rolls, compared to a LOSS of 13,391 for Republicans in what is considered a swing state. Nothing about that is bad, and virtually nothing about the campaign that will be run in Pennsylvania, built in at least the main around progressive themes, will be bad either. I know that I'm supposed to buy into this fear of demographics and racism in middle America, but I'm sorry, I don't. That article doesn't mention the growing African-American and Hispanic populations in Johnstown, by the way. Further, Democrats like to say that they'll never vote for the other candidate if theirs loses and it never happens, and even in this very polarizing cycle, I don't buy that it'll happen in large numbers. Especially when the hammer comes down on McCain, although the one opportunity cost here is the delay in bringing down that hammer.

So I'm cool with things moving through Pennsylvania. There's a lot of primary money that has to be spent, anyway. And North Carolina and Indiana are two weeks after that (And I want a Pennsylvania-style level of organization in North Carolina, where I think Obama can pull off the upset). But if Obama turned this around this week, and I believe he has, then the result on May 6 is that he'll be further ahead in pledged delegates than he is now. And that'll REALLY be it because there won't be enough delegates left to gather.

If this goes one day past May 6 I'll start to get mad. Five months is plenty of time for the general election.