Here's a posting I put up at the Mother Jones blog:

The morning after, the Clinton crew was unbowed. As Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night was being creamed by Barack Obama in North Carolina and eking out a narrow victory in Indiana, pundits throughout Cable News Land were pronouncing her dead, dead, dead. Tim Russert said the race was over. But when a reporter on the campaign's morning conference call, asked Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, if there had been "any discussions about not going forward," he said, "No discussions." And he seemed to mean it.

On the call, Wolfson, deputy communications director Phil Singer, and chief strategist Geoff Garin were forward-looking. They claimed to be "happy" about the 1.8-percent win in Indiana--but without sounding at all jubilant about the squeaker. As for North Carolina--where she lost by 14 points--they claimed "progress" there and pointed to the fact that she beat Obama among white voters by 24 points (as if the increasing racial polarization within the Democratic primary electorate is something to celebrate). They acknowledged that Clinton had in recent weeks loaned her campaign nearly $6.5 million--and claimed it was a sign of her commitment to moving ahead and, of course, fighting for real people. They repeated the campaign's call to seat the disputed delegations of Florida and Michigan, and they indicated they were ready to rumble in the upcoming primaries. Voters in those states, Garin said, should be given the ability "to express their voice." He added, "All we are doing is suggesting the process ought to play out."

In other words, damn the pundits, full speed ahead. It appeared that Clinton--faced with three alternatives: fighting on as if nothing has changed, dropping out, or planning a graceful exit strategy--has for the time being settled on option one.

But the voyage got a lot rockier after Indiana and North Carolina. As the cable news analysts pointed out, it is now practically a mathematical certainty that Obama will end the primaries next month with a lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote, even if the results in Florida and Michigan are included. So Clinton has run out of metrics. The days of fuzzy math are over. There will be no measure by which she will be able to argue she is the voters' choice. All the campaign is left with is an opinion: Clinton can do better than Obama against John McCain in the fall. Clinton and her lieutenants do have stats to cite, notably her performance among working-class voters (meaning, white working-class voters). She has demonstrated, Wolfson maintained on the call, "a proven ability" to win over these voters, while Obama has not. This is, he added, "the crux of the argument" that the Clinton campaign will be making to the superdelegates. And in the next primary states--West Virginia (May 13), Kentucky (May 20), Oregon (May 20)--Clinton will try to show once more that she fares better among lunch-pail Democrats.

So now Clinton, who passionately insists that democracy demands that the Florida and Michigan contest be counted and that voters in the last few states be granted the opportunity to state their preferences, is left with nothing but the most elitist of strategies: she must convince party insiders--the 300 or so not-yet-committed superdelegates--to vote against the popular will of the voters who participated in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. On the conference call, I asked Garin whether his campaign is essentially stuck with a "nullification strategy." He disputed his campaign's game plan was anything like a "nullification strategy." All delegates--pledged delegates and superdelegates--have "equal moral weight in the process," he said, and the rules of the party "anticipate there will be delegates" who will make "good faith decisions."

That is so. But for Clinton to win, these superdelegates will have to say that they know better than the voters. It is certainly permissible under Democratic Party rules. But might such an action blow apart the party? There is no way for the Clinton campaign to orchestrate this strategy politely or calmly and wrap it up quickly after the primaries conclude on June 3. After all, no superdelegate commitment is solid until he or she actually votes at the convention. Even if Clinton is able to sway enough superdelegates and win the necessary number of commitments, Obama will not fold his tent and accept this as a deal done. He would fight for those superdelegates and, if need be, fight the process. There would be a bloody battle from early June until the first ballot at the convention in late August. Nullification cannot be accomplished neatly. Clinton and her crew must realize that.

I asked Garin if he foresaw any problem if the candidate with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes was not chosen at the convention. "When we get to June 3, we'll have a very close result," he said. "This might raise the question of how close is close." He didn't answer the question.

Right now, the Clintonites are saying they're not bailing. But in for a penny, in for a pound. The only way she can triumph is by first persuading superdelegates to vote against the wishes of primary voters and caucus-goers and by then mounting an ugly fight that will last for months until the convention--a fight that would likely create consequences that would resonate far beyond the convention.

It may be full speed ahead for Clinton and her gang, but that's only because her finger is on the button and she is considering pushing it.

"We now know who the Democratic nominee will be." That's what Tim Russert said shortly after midnight on Wednesday, even while telection-watchers all over the world were waiting for the final results in Indiana. He was writing off Hillary Clinton. Done. Finished. Kaput. Whether she knew it or not.

A close win or a loss in Indiana, coupled with a resounding defeat in North Carolina, indicates that Clinton, Queen of Pennsylvania, is now the candidate losing altitude. The recent polls all showed her ahead by a decent margin in Indiana and closing in North Carolina. If those polls were on target, then somehow Barack Obama managed a late surge in both states.

But are Russert and the other pundits penning Clinton's obit prematurely? Does she have no choice but to say good-bye? She and her campaign aides immediately went into huddle mode--she canceled her appearances on the morning shows--in order to decide what to do now, as their cable news surrogates continued to talk up her chances in the coming primaries.

Given that it is likely that Clinton and her crew have not yet reached any decisions, a reporter or pundit can only at this point hazard a guess. And I would not count her out so quickly. Not that she has a chance. As the cable news analysts pointed out repeatedly on Tuesday night, Obama was racking up more delegates and more popular votes--further undermining any argument Clinton might be able to make to the superdelegates. But as I've noted before, the lesson the Clintons learned during the impeachment episode was this: no matter how bad it gets, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and ignore those calling for you to quit. The Clintons have defied the pundits before. They may give it another stab.

Will Indiana and North Carolina decide anything? In all likelihood, no. If Barack Obama were to cream Hillary Clinton in both states, there would be more pressure on Clinton to quit. But (a) that electoral prospect does not seem likely, given the direction of the recent polls in each state and (b) Clinton would still not leave the race. She would keep on going, hoping for another Reverend Wright-like development that would cripple Obama.

And if Clinton manages to win each primary--and a victory for her in North Carolina is way against the odds--there's no way Obama, who will maintain a lead in pledged delegates--will bow out. If there's a split--the likeliest of the possibilities--nothing really changes. Obama will argue that the math (and the pledged delegate count) remains on his side; Clinton will argue that Obama did not close the deal with Indianans, so she must press on.

That is, Obama will continue to have the better argument. After all, if Clinton were to apply her campaign's spin on Obama to her own campaign, she would have to concede that she has not closed the deal with a greater number of voters in Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Clinton is also heading toward a profound contradiction. In recent weeks, she has tried to depict Obama as an elitist and position herself as a pro-democracy populist. On the gas tax holiday, she's down with the people, who are hurt by high gasoline prices, while Obama is in league with "elite opinion" and--egads!--economists, who all are, no doubt, driving around in limos and laughing at the plight of working people. (Pass the Grey Poupon!) She and her lieutenants also constantly call for seating the Michigan and Florida delegations so that the votes of the people in those states count. And they insist that it's good for democracy for Clinton to remain in the race, for the voters in the upcoming states with primaries (and Puerto Rico) deserve a chance to participate. She's Hillary of the people and for the people.

But her ultimate strategy is one of utter elitism. She hopes to be able to persuade the non-elected superdelegates to support her and provide her the edge that trumps Obama's lead in delegates determined by the voters. So who's the real populist here? The candidate who wants the nomination to be decided by the voters, or the candidate who prays party insiders will determine the race against the will of the actual voters? Clinton the Populist is all for empowering the voters of Michigan and Florida and those in the upcoming states--all to keep alive her prospects of winning over the party elite. Once the primaries are done, the people won't matter for her.

How will she make that pivot? No doubt, with confidence and vigor, and without acknowledging the pivot. Her campaign is not about adherence to consistent principles. It's about winning. And when the primaries are done--and one day, they will be done--she will have to decide how far she is willing to go to undo the votes of the people.

Quick--name an official task that was Hillary Clinton's responsibility last time she was in the White House? The answer is obvious: health care. It was a top priority for the Bill Clinton administration in the first years of his presidency. And he handed the mission to his two-for-the-price-of-one First Lady.

What happened next? We all know: an unmitigated disaster that set the cause of health care reform back for years. Hillary Clinton and her top advisers--in proceedings marked by secrecy and we-know-best arrogance--cooked up a plan that no one could understand. They bent over backward to accommodate the corporate community and miscalculated: Big Business ended up opposing the plan. And the common folks who the plan was supposed to help couldn't comprehend it--which meant they (and their elected representatives) could not fight effectively for it.

Flash forward to 2008. Clinton is fighting for her political life in a fierce battle with Barack Obama. She's pandering on gas prices, she's suggesting that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief, she's pouncing on a remark he made to suggest he's an elitist, she's making a big deal out of his past relationship with a onetime 70s radical, she's accusing him of not being committed to withdrawing from Iraq, she's pushing reporters to dwell upon Obama's friendship with a developer indicted on corruption charges, she's pondering how to game the delegate system. And her latest ad in North Carolina, which holds an important primary on Tuesday, she repeats her claim that she is the candidate who can make change happen.

In the ad, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, a Clinton supporter, says:

These are tough times in America and I think that Hillary is the one we can count on to get the job done. She's going to turn the economy around, she's going bring new jobs, she's going to get some tax cuts for the middle class for a change. She's going to make health care available to everybody in this country, and she's going to do everything she can to help every child reach their full potential. She is so resilient, so determined. She knows how to deliver.

To which anyone with a skeptical view (and a memory) might say, "Hillarycare." Sure, she's racked up a few accomplishments as a senator. But she failed miserably on the biggest task she has ever assumed. She didn't get that job done; she botched it. True, it was a tough assignment, and the odds were against her. But if she's making promises now, her first attempt to "make health care available to everybody in this country" is relevant. (More relevant than the issue of her laugh.) Well, maybe she can get the job done on the second time around. Older and wiser, and all that. But her early-90s failure was one reason why health care disappeared as a political issue for so long. That's a reality that present-day campaign rhetoric can be measured against.