1. She can't win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.
2. She can't win the nomination without a bloody convention battle -- after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question -- but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.
4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don't think she can win and want her to give up. Same with superdelegate-to-the-stars Donna Brazile.
And in my rush to comment, it looks like I previously underestimated the potential import of Richardson's endorsement:
My great affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver.
It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the Fall.The 1990's were a decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward.
I have an odd track record at making predictions. More often than not I get the final result right, but my ability to predict when that result will come is miserable. I predicted weeks ago that Obama's post-Super Tuesday performance would lead the Supers to band together and bring this thing to an end. It hasn't happened yet. Yet....
Politico: Story behind the story: The Clinton myth
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party's most reliable constituency.Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote -- which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle -- and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
As it happens, many people inside Clinton's campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.
In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.
The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics.
Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.
One reason is fear of embarrassment. In its zeal to avoid predictive reporting of the sort that embarrassed journalists in New Hampshire, the media -- including Politico -- have tended to avoid zeroing in on the tough math Clinton faces.
Avoiding predictions based on polls even before voters cast their ballots is wise policy. But that's not the same as drawing sober and well-grounded conclusions about the current state of a race after millions of voters have registered their preferences.
The antidote to last winter's flawed predictions is not to promote a misleading narrative based on the desired but unlikely story line of one candidate....
The media are also enamored of the almost mystical ability of the Clintons to work their way out of tight jams, as they have done for 16 years at the national level. That explains why some reporters are inclined to believe the Clinton campaign when it talks about how she's going to win on the third ballot at the Democratic National Convention in August.
That's certainly possible -- and, to be clear, we'd love to see the race last that long -- but it's folly to write about this as if it is likely.
Amazing. Even in writing about the myth that they have helped construct, they continue to perpetuate another one. In the paragraph right after the last one quoted above, they marvel at the power of the Clinton's to shape narrative. But they never, not once, question whether the "almost mystical ability of the Clintons to work their way out of tight jams" is itself a myth. Which matters. Because it is.
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