Curtains For Clinton (Revised)

HRC needed to get a decent win in Indiana tonight. It looks like a squeaker, though. CNN has finally called it for her, by about one percent, but given that the last of the precincts to report are from Gary, which is a heavily African-American area, that may not have been the most prudent call. We'll see tomorrow. Not that a narrow win is really any better for her than a narrow loss. She needed a decisive win, and didn't get it.

What's more, HRC needed to stay competitive in North Carolina tonight. Right now, it's looking like a fourteen-point spanking by BHO, which will substantially affect the delegate count and swamp out whatever marginal gain HRC might have realized from Pennsylvania.

Tomorrow morning I'll have a new update on my delegate counter, but for now, it's really looking grim for the former First Lady.

See, here's the thing. If my current count is right (BHO has 1,838 and HRC has 1,684) that means that BHO needs 187 delegates. HRC needs 341. There are 507 left up for grabs. About a dozen of them will go with whoever enters the convention with the most pledged delegates (which all but inevitably means BHO now) and at least two of those are currently committed to HRC but will change their mind at the convention. So that means HRC needs to get 70% of the remaining delegates in order to win.

Otherwise, she loses. On the first ballot at the Denver convention. If BHO can keep on performing with 14-point victories, maybe before the convention, even.

Unless something truly miraculous happens, the sun will not rise in the north tomorrow morning and set in the south tomorrow night. Water will not fall up. And Hillary Clinton will not get 70% of the remaining delegates. Canceling all of her media and public appearances for tomorrow is a sign that she and her campaign managers take tonight's results as a very serious blow.

Ding-dong? Several pundits are now calling the nomination race for Obama. Which is hardly news or even a particularly ballsy prediction, at this point. Had they said that Obama would be the nominee after, say, Iowa or New Hampshire, I'd have been impressed. Today, with more than 85% of the delegates picked and the math analyzed to death, that's not really reaching so far out on the limb.