A Bleak Time in Hillaryland

Read the first sentence of this piece in the Daily Intelligencer:

If you happened to be watching TV last night at, oh, around ten o’clock, you may have witnessed the moment when, symbolically, the presidential primaries ended — and the general election began.

Now, read the first sentence of this item that was written last night:

I watched Obama's speech in Madison, WI in a packed arena (and more people in an overflow area) and he has clearly started the general election campaign.

Sometimes I'm good, and sometimes I'm REALLY good.

Let's move on with the DI piece:

Out in Madison, Wisconsin, in the speech celebrating his clean and decisive sweep of the Potomac primary, Barack Obama ignored his current opponent and trained his fire instead on the man who may stand as his future rival, John McCain, arguing that “his priorities … are bound to the failed policies of the past.” A few minutes later, from a stage in Alexandria, Virginia, McCain belittled Obama as blatantly as possible without ever mentioning him by name: “To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”

And where in all this, you might well wonder, was Hillary Clinton? In El Paso, Texas, imploring, in effect, “Hey! Remember me?”

The impact of Obama’s Maryland-Virginia-D.C. trifecta could hardly have been more damaging or deflating for Clinton and her team. For two weeks, the Clinton people had been laboring feverishly to lower expectations, telling any reporter in earshot that they expected to win none of the primaries that took place last night. But no amount of pre-spinning could soften the blow of losing a trio of contests by 23, 29, and 51 points (in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., respectively) — especially coming on the back of a weekend in which Obama had soundly thrashed Clinton in four states plus the U.S. Virgin Islands. Even more distressing for Clinton's side were the signs that Obama had eaten into her bedrock of support. That he’d beaten her among white voters and folks earning less than $50,000 a year in Virginia. That he’d done the same among union households and white Catholics in Maryland.

By now, of course, you’re savvy enough to understand that what really matters is the delegate count. And you know that, because of the principle of proportionality that governs the Democratic race, it’s hard for either side to pull away — except, that is, in the case of an absolute shellacking. But a shellacking is precisely what Obama administered to Clinton on Tuesday and in the elections over the weekend. Indeed, for the first time since Iowa, BHO is ahead of HRC in terms of committed delegates. He’s even ahead, by most counts, after superdelegates are factored in. According to Chuck Todd, the political director at NBC, for Clinton to regain her lead will require her to win more than 55 percent of the delegates up for grabs in the nineteen states that still remain to vote, which means carrying the states where she has a shot with roughly 60 percent of the vote.

That would be a tall order to fill under any circumstances — tall, but not impossible, in theory. The trouble is that the next two states on the calendar are Hawaii and Wisconsin on February 19. Hawaii is both a caucus state and Obama’s birthplace, so forget about that one. Wisconsin, by contrast, offers demographics that would seem to offer Clinton a chance: a big chunk of white working-class voters, a small population of African-Americans. Yet the Clinton squad appears, at the moment, to be writing off Wisconsin. While Obama is in the Badger State now, laying down his juju, HRC’s schedule for the next three days has her exclusively in Texas and Ohio, which vote on March 4.

Note to Hillary: Call Rudy Giuliani and ask him how that firewall strategy worked out for him.

It's now very unlikely that Hillary will be able to catch up to Obama in the pledged delegates, which mean she'll go to the convention trailing in delegates, popular votes, and states won, and will be hoping to overturn those results with the superdelegates.

Good luck with that.