Black Box Report

As the votes are being counted in Texas' open primary and the delegates are, uh, delegated, voter turnout could be even higher than the record turnout expected, due to an unlikely last-minute endorsement for Clinton. It seems Rush Limbaugh told his Texas listeners to vote for Hillary:

I want Hillary to stay in this...We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don't have the stomach for it...I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose. They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch, and it's all going to stop if Hillary loses.

Shades of Democrats for Mitt!, except for two small differences: 1) While Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas urged Democrats to prolong the GOP nomination by voting for Romney in the open Michigan primary, organizing Democrats to do anything on what amounts to a whim is like herding cats, and the lark had predictable results - Democrats and independents voted overwhelmingly for McCain; and 2) Romney never had a legitimate shot at actually winning the nomination. As such, the conservative blog Outside the Beltway doesn't think this is the greatest idea:

While I subscribe to the conventional wisdom that Clinton would be the weaker opponent in the fall, we really don't know that with any certainty. Far better, it seems to me, to let the process play out fair and square. Certainly, Republicans wouldn't want to have any complicity in electing Hillary Clinton president.

(On a side note, if this actually happened, if Clinton won Texas due to the efforts of the dittoheads, and that sparked a legitimate "comeback" which led to her running the table, all the way through November and a Clinton presidency could be attributed to Rush and his listeners...well...Can schadenfreude be fatal?)

But even with the help of Rush's dittoheads, a close look at the math suggests how difficult Hillary's task will be from here out:

For Clinton to pull ahead, she will need to win 57% of the remaining pledged delegates. To keep that number from rising even higher, they of course need to win 57% of the delegates on Tuesday, which would mean getting at least 213 delegates to Obama's 161 -- a 52 delegate advantage. If they net anything below 52 delegates, they fall even further behind. This is the key number to keep in mind when watching the election returns.

And, of course, even netting 52 delegates is hardly a big win. The Clinton campaign picked Texas and Ohio as its battleground because those states are particularly Clinton-friendly. The remaining primary states include several -- like Mississippi, Oregon, and North Carolina -- where Obama is likely to rack up major wins. That means that Clinton needs to gain well over 57% of the delegates in the states that are better for her. The only way she could possibly do this would be to utterly destroy Obama's reputation, make him a radioactive figure, like Al Sharpton.

And even then, Clinton would have to rely on Superdelegates to push her over the finish line, a divisive and controversial move in itself. For all of these reasons, blogger Matthew Yglesias thinks, when push comes to shove, Hillary won't go there:

If Wednesday morning the only shot Clinton has at winning the nomination involves getting the superdelegates to overrule a large Obama lead in pledged delegates and/or somehow getting the Michigan and Florida delegations seated, then Clinton's chances of winning the nomination will still be extremely low, and the prospects of either person winning the general election would get quite a bit lower. Basically, Clinton would be completely burning years worth of goodwill built up by her and her husband in the progressive community and ending her shot at playing a leadership role in the Senate in exchange for a very marginal increase in the odds of her becoming president in January 2009. A choice like that would be bad for the country, bad for the party, and bad for Hillary Clinton. It would be good, primarily, for her campaign's highest-paid operatives who would keep getting their checks, and it would be good for John McCain.

I've thought about it, and I don't think she'll do it. I don't think she and Bill are that out of touch with reality, and I don't think that most of her key supporters are either. If her results today are good enough to give her a realistic shot at winning the nomination through winning primaries, then of course she'll stay in. But if the delegate math isn't there, then I think she'll get out.

And even if she does - and that's still an "if" at this point - there's at least the consolation prize: annoying Rush Limbaugh.