Black Box Report

One week before the votes took place, Hillary Clinton predicted primaries in Indiana and North Carolina would be "game changers." And indeed they were. Not in the way she was hoping for, but in a "no more games" kind of way:

Are we done pretending this race is still going?

Not quite yet, but the writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to read it. Needing to keep it close in North Carolina and score an inspirational win in Indiana, Clinton did neither, and effectively saw her last arguments fade away:

She has nothing left to commend her to the superdelegates except an electabilty argument unsupported by a single key metric or even circumstantial evidence that Pastorgate has done Obama...damage at the polls. Are they going to take the nomination from the first serious black candidate for president without any compelling data to hang their decision on? Not a chance. It's over. Let's move on.

And as if to make it official, TV's talking heads have removed the scales from their eyes and finally discovered the delegate and popular vote math. Even Lord High Pundit Tim Russert declared "We now know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, and no one's going to dispute it." While there are no shortages of Clinton supporters who will indeed dispute that, this is not the message the Clinton campaign wants out there:

Russert is largely responsible for articulating the conventional wisdom, embraced by the DC establishment. And once the establishment decides that a candidate is finished, and starts treating (them) accordingly, it practically becomes self-fulfilling. In Clinton's case...it's critical that the broader campaign narrative suggest that she still has a shot at the nomination. And right now, on every channel, everyone is hearing the opposite.

Except, apparently, Clinton, who's forging ahead to West Virginia, even if most aren't sure why:

It's been pretty clear for over a month that Hillary's only chance to win was to hope that Obama got hit by a meteor or something. In the end...he got hit by several meteors and it still didn't knock him out. Short of Obama literally keeling over from a stroke, I'm not sure what Hillary has left to hope for.

Graceful exits are difficult to time. And as long as Hillary keeps winning contests - even if those wins do nothing for her overall chances for the nomination - it would be hard to convince her and her campaign to go out on (ostensibly) a win.

So, whither Hillary? Now that the math has spoken, does she grind it out, or does she get out? Or maybe something in between? Even supporters who concede the nomination is not likely are urging her to keep on keepin on:

She should run her campaign against John McCain. She will win West Virginia and Kentucky...(and) might even challenge in Oregon. What she should not do is run against Barack Obama. If there is a path to the nomination for her, and I doubt there is, it won't come from attacking Obama now.

"You can stay in the race, but only if you play nice." This is being called, in some circles, the "Huckabee option", and for Clinton, it may have some appeal. Especially if Clinton is angling for the VP slot on the ticket. Attacking McCain would not only improve her stature among Democrats who've turned against her "kitchen sink" campaign, and would go a long way towards some of that party healing we hear so much about as well.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like Hillary plans on playing nice:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Yes. There certainly is.

Because...ummmm...y'know....people who aren't white don't work hard?

See, Obama's coalition is bigger. But Clinton's is broader, because it consists of more Real Americans and fewer [insert adjectives from RNC attack ad here] elitists and Shiftless Negroes.

Is Hillary a racist? No. But when even a staunch supporter as Charlie Rangel calls that a dumb thing to say, her tactics have some scared she's passed the point of no return:

That's what bothers the most about what she's doing now: the sense...(that) she knows how elections are won and you and I don't, she has an instinctive understanding of precisely what compromises and panders and nods and winks get you to 50.1% of the vote and you and I don't, and she's not going to stop doing this until the rest of us see reason and reject anyone who has a different game plan.

Like the Terminator in a lemon yellow pantsuit.