Black Box Report

Let's talk about Great Expectations. No, not the Dickens novel, but this screaming headline from the Drudge Report today:

DANGER DAY: HILLARY FACES '15-POINT DEFEAT' IN NC; SEES INDIANA WIN

15 points? Really? I hadn't heard that. In fact, no one's heard that, not even Zogby. So keep in mind this is Drudge we're talking about, and that this is Team Clinton's way of inflating their opponent's expectations to make themselves look better when they inevitably lose NC:

Sources don't favor certain outlets because they think reporters have friendly faces...(but) because they feel they get good coverage, can influence other coverage, and can get the message they want out the way they want to get it out. If the Clinton folks say they're behind by 15 and Obama wins by 5 points the Clinton camp declares it a victory for them.

This is also known as the Clinton campaign's Standard Operating Procedure.

Boy, those Clinton staffers do love talking to Matt Drudge. And why not? To the rest of the media, he rules their world, and once you get him to set up your opponent's expectations, you can turn to other media to push the "perception" issue. Chuck Todd at MSNBC's First Read is, as ever, a willing accomplice:

Clinton seems to be on the upswing in North Carolina, and Obama seems on the upswing in Indiana. Yet both are likely to win on their "home" demographic courts. So what would the Vegas lines be today? Our guess: five points in each state, which should already be considered a perception victory for Clinton. But given the closet superdelegate support Obama seems to have, he's been given the benefit of the doubt with some if he simply wins North Carolina by, well, about five points. You'll know it will be a mediocre to bad night for Obama if his campaign has to talk about who won the most delegates tonight, rather than by how much they won each state.

...even though the candidate with the most delegates is the only metric that matters.

I understand the media loves a good fight and a horse race, and Hil and Barack have given them a doozy, but please, enough is enough. All good things must come to an end, and this thing stopped being good shortly after Super Tuesday. Slate's Tim Noah is getting dizzy watching the goalposts move, and says it's time to cut the suspense:

Here's a rule I would like every political reporter, campaign official, TV talking head, and politician in the United States to follow. Go ahead and say, if you like, that Hillary Clinton retains a serious chance of winning the Democratic nomination. If you say this, however, you must describe a set of circumstances whereby this could happen. Try not to make it sound like a fairy tale....

So, please, let's stop pretending there's much suspense about who the nominee will be. As an arithmecrat, I will not consider anyone the winner until a candidate achieves 2,025 delegates. But neither am I obliged to believe Hillary Clinton has a plausible shot. She doesn't.

No matter what the "perception" is.