After losing to Obama in North Carolina and barely winning Indiana (as of now, anyways), Hillary is nearly finished.
As I write this, Drudge is already calling Obama "The Nominee." The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains, "A substantial margin by Obama in the Tarheel State and--at best--a VERY narrow Clinton win in Indiana could be just the sign that donors, superdelegates and party leaders need to begin the process of bringing the nomination fight to an end." Marc Ambinder adds that she "needed to find a way to give superdelegates their 'Holy Moly' moment, and she failed. Absent an extraordinary intervening event, the question for Hillary Clinton now is how she ends the race."
Bloggers across the spectrum agree that it's only a matter of time before Hillary exits the race. On the right, Michelle Malkin says, "She gave it her all, found her voice, lost her voice, smiled through her lies, lied through her cries, schemed, clawed, and cackled. But alas, it was not enough." Richelieu simply calls her "Toast." And at Hot Air, Allahpundit concludes that "she has nothing left to commend her to the supers except an electabilty argument unsupported by a single key metric or even circumstantial evidence that Pastorgate has done Obama grievous 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."
The left is much the same. Kyle Moore at Comments from Left Field proclaims, "Final analysis of the primaries that have transpired last night: Obama won the nomination, again (I am of the mind that he won it back at the end of February, and for all intents and purposes, thanks to the math, he did)." And TNR's Jason Zengerle concludes, "I don't think this speech was supposed to be Hillary's valedictory, but, despite her best efforts, it sure felt that way."
Still, some bloggers, like Hugh Hewitt, think that Hillary should fight to the death. Jules Crittenden thinks she will and says, "The only way she dies soon is if the superdelegates organize themselves to club her." But as John Podhoretz noted last night, "Hillary Clinton will come under the most withering personal assault of her career should she fail to drop out of the race tomorrow. It will be far worse than the Republican 'attack machine' because it is going to come from her fellow party members, her peers, and even a great many of her supposed friends." Is this the fall of the house of Clinton at last? And more importantly, can we be finished with the Democratic primary now, please?
