All that remains for Hillary Clinton is to extract herself with grace. Barack Obama cannot now be beaten, writes Denis Staunton
HILLARY CLINTON was campaigning yesterday in West Virginia, which holds its Democratic primary next Tuesday and is one of five remaining states, along with Puerto Rico, due to vote over the next four weeks. Earlier, her campaign told reporters that she intends to carry on fighting for the nomination until early June - and beyond, unless the party recognises delegates from disputed contests in Michigan and Florida.
For almost everyone outside Clinton's inner circle, however, the Democratic race effectively ended on Tuesday night and the party is preparing to rally around Barack Obama as its nominee.
Clinton has 1,726 committed delegates to the party convention that in August will formally select the presidential candidate to compete against Republican John McCain in November. She needs 2,025 delegates but her rival Barack Obama now has 1,876 and cannot, on the numbers, be beaten. Short of an extraordinary, unexpected event - such as a huge scandal exploding around Obama in the next few weeks - Clinton cannot win the Democratic nomination.
Obama's huge victory in North Carolina and a near-draw in Indiana have robbed Clinton of her two strongest arguments to the almost 800 superdelegates - elected officials and senior party figures - whose votes will decide the nomination. Obama's lead among delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses has been so solid for so long that Clinton's pitch to superdelegates has been based on the overall popular vote and her claim to be more electable in November.
Obama's 230,000 margin in North Carolina gives him a 715,000 lead in the popular vote if Florida and Michigan, which broke party rules by scheduling their primaries too early, are counted. If Florida, where both candidates were on the ballot, is included in the total, Obama is still ahead by 420,000. Adding Michigan, where Clinton was on the ballot but Obama was not, Obama is still ahead by 92,000.
Tuesday's results, which followed Obama's two most turbulent weeks since the campaign began, suggest that he has recovered from the controversy over his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and that he survived a dispute with Clinton over suspending the federal gasoline tax. Clinton was confident that her support for suspending the tax (which amounts to 18.5 cents per gallon of fuel) would swing Indiana her way by a wide margin and confine Obama's win in North Carolina to single digits.
Obama's advisers believe the dispute instead benefited their candidate by allowing him to move beyond the Rev Wright story and reassert his image as a new kind of politician who refuses to pander for votes.
Clinton's aides remain convinced that Obama will be a vulnerable candidate in November and that the Republicans will launch a relentless campaign to discredit him, questioning his patriotism and raising fears about his past associations.
At his victory rally in North Carolina on Tuesday, Obama told supporters that he is expecting such attacks, adding that any Democratic nominee would face such a barrage. "The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they'll run, it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. I didn't get into the race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for president because this is the time to end it," he said.
"We will end it this time not because I'm perfect - I think by now this campaign has reminded all of us of that. We will end it not by duplicating the same tactics and the same strategies as the other side, because that will just lead us down the same path of polarisation and gridlock. We will end it by telling the truth — forcefully, repeatedly, confidently - and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change."
Clinton's aides say she has enough resources to compete in the remaining six contests but her campaign is already deep in debt and she has lent it more than $11 million of her own money. Money is the mother's milk of American politics and Obama is swimming in it, allowing him to blanket the airwaves and employ hundreds of staff in each primary state.
Donors will be reluctant to pour money into Clinton's campaign if they see no realistic prospect of victory and like superdelegates - only about 260 of whom have still to declare for either candidate, many will be eager to climb onto Obama's bandwagon now that he looks like the presumptive nominee.
Former senator George McGovern said yesterday he was switching his support from Clinton to Obama and other superdelegates are likely to follow him over the next few days. If Clinton determines that she has no chance of winning the nomination, she must now consider how best she should leave the race. It is one thing to win ugly but losing ugly could do the former first lady nothing but harm, causing lasting damage to her own political future as well as her husband's legacy.
Victory in West Virginia next week, which polls predict, could offer an opportunity to bow out on a high note before she is forced out by a stampede of superdelegates to the Obama camp.
Many Democrats and political pundits have speculated about a "dream ticket" with Clinton as Obama's running mate but Obama has little incentive to offer her a place on the ticket. He is aware of the need to reach out to white, working-class voters, Catholics and other groups that Clinton won in the primaries but a mid-western governor or senator could be an equally effective running mate in that regard.
Both Clintons have promised to work tirelessly to elect a Democrat in November, regardless of the nominee and they are likely to keep their word. Clinton will need the goodwill of the party if she wishes to remain in the senate or if she seeks another office, such as New York governor in 2010, or takes another tilt at the presidency in 2012. Obama owed his victory in North Carolina to a huge turnout by African-Americans, more than nine out of 10 of whom supported him. They remain, along with college-educated, affluent liberals, his core supporters and he must find a way of reaching beyond that base if he is to defeat McCain in November.
Throughout the primary campaign, Obama has shown himself to be an unusually resilient candidate who has often turned apparent adversity to his advantage. Clinton's campaign made mistakes, notably its failure to contest a string of caucuses after Super Tuesday in February, which allowed Obama to run up his delegate score.
Her greatest misfortune, however, may have been to have found herself matched against a unique political phenomenon, the greatest American orator for a generation with a genius for organisation and a prodigious gift for fundraising.
Obama's rise has been so sure and apparently effortless that it almost obscures the astonishing nature of his achievement, as a 46-year-old first-term African-American senator, to be poised to grasp the Democratic presidential nomination from the holder of the most potent brand name in American politics.