I just want to clarify my position, and I'm going to hang off Bionic's well-positioned to do so.

Some people have read me as saying that Clinton will drop out soon after May 6th. I was not and don't believe that she will.

Others have read me as saying the math shows that a Clinton win is mathematically improbable, which is true but not the point.

This post isn't about the math. It's about the story. In order to convince people that she's still a viable candidate, she needs a plausible story about how she can pull this thing off. Since March, her story has been that she can win the popular vote, get MI/FL counted, and convince enough superdels to vote for her. It's a reach, but imaginable.

After tomorrow, that story falls apart. What the math shows is that she won't be able to win the popular vote. So she needs a new story. Unfortunately for Clinton, there aren't any more good stories. If she were to be nominated without the pledged delegate count or the popular vote, or by some theoretical "nuclear" option, there would likely be riots in Denver and a civil war within the party. I can't see how it's reasonable to expect 70% of uncommitted superdelegates to sign on for that.

I'm sure that she can convince some people, but without a plausible story for her path to the nomination, there will be important voices--pundits, superdelegates, party leaders--who will stop taking her candidacy seriously. Because their voices affect the race itself, there will likely be a snowball effect where what they say makes her story even less plausible, creating more doubt among other voices.

Her campaign is in some ways ingenious, and perhaps they'll come up with a new plausible story that hasn't occurred to me. But I don't think that they have any stories left in their playbook.

Let me reconcile that false contradiction for you, George.

We are going to advocate Puerto Rican statehood, and with it, the right of Puerto Rico to receive electoral votes.

This is consistent with our crusade for Guamanian voting rights, which I ask you to view and recommend:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/05/our-campaign-for-guamanian-vot.php

I'm Bill Clinton. Clearer now?

You're either kidding or paranoid, man. Wright will wait until after IN and NC.

It seems more likely that we've become trapped in a Groundhog-Day-esque scenario in which it's always the *next* contest which is pivotal.

Thing is, there are no more pivotal contests. No room for momentum, no firewalls, no possible hail Mary's. The sum of the delegates in the remaining primaries isn't much larger than the sum of the May 6th delegates. And popular vote after May 6th (not including PR) is smaller than the popular vote on May 6th.

In short, I'm glad that you left the "How I learned to stop worrying and..." part out of the title.

An oversight. A shame because it would have improved the tittle.

I agree about the superdels trickling in and lowering the percentage. I didn't put them into my projection because it's not really projectable.

I think the "nuclear" option is outside the realm of possibility. It would "blow up" the party even more surely than the superdels voting en masse for Clinton.

The first step is acceptance

Maybe for a day. The thing is that we're so close to the endgame that I expect the pundits to take a hard look at Clinton's options, harder than they have to date, and they won't see a lot room for movement.

I apologize for another football analogy, but think about how a sportscaster reacts to the end of game with one team far ahead. As long as he can, he'll milk it for excitement, speculating about what the losing team might do to come back and getting excited when they complete big plays. But eventually, you reach a point in the game when the losing team cannot realistically come back, and talk of hail mary's and onside kicks starts to seem silly. So then the sportscaster switches modes and starts talking about the inevitable result and what the winning team did right and what the losing team did wrong and what an historic game it has been.

I expect that to happen after Tuesday. The pundits will see that there are no longer any big plays that can get Clinton the nomination. The last "big" primary day is May 20th, and it's half the size of May 6th, so it's not big enough to get excited about, and then there's nothing of importance after it. That is to say, Clinton could conceivably still score one last touchdown on May 20th, but she's down by too many points for it to matter. So not seeing an option to get excited about, the pundits will switch over to postmortem mode. They'll start discussing her strategic mistakes and Obama's incredible successes, and they'll begin looking forward to the general election. After all, the primaries are just the division championships. We still have the superbowl to look forward to.

And unlike a football game, what the pundits say can actually affect the race. They'll start using words like "presumptive nominee" and talking the about Obama-McCain matchup. Clinton's attacks will slide into the background. As people internalize her inevitable loss, they'll stop donating, and the superdelegate holdouts will feel more comfortable endorsing Obama, which then encourages more "the end is nigh" talk from the pundits, and so on.