WHEN THE US primary votes are counted in Oregon and Kentucky tomorrow evening, Barack Obama will already be back in Iowa, rallying his troops in the "must-win" state. Must-win in the general election campaign, of course - Mr Obama is already moving on, and turning his fire on the Republican candidate.
In recent days he has even been referring pointedly to his rival's campaign for the Democratic nomination in the past tense. Hillary Clinton's campaign "was hard fought", and she "was relentless and very effective".
While Clinton is expected to take Kentucky, the truth is she is electorally a dead man walking. West Virginia, last week, was always going to be kind to her. In the end she defeated Obama by two to one in a state whose voters are 95 per cent white, a large majority poor rural or blue collar workers. They are God-fearing evangelicals, overwhelmingly gun supporters, less educated than most other states, and four out of 10 voters were over 60. Classic Clinton country - but with only 28 delegates at stake, too few to shake up the race even if she won them all. Under the system she won 20.
In defending her decision not to pull out now, Clinton is no longer relying on the argument that she can win a majority of ordinary delegates, but instead on a case pitched at the party leadership and the diminishing ranks of about 200 unpledged superdelegates concerning her electability: that she alone can beat John McCain in the key states like Iowa.
Clinton does not have any choice about the argument she deploys, she's lost the maths - Obama now has 1,896 delegates to 1,717 for Clinton. It will take 2,026 delegates to clinch the nomination and last week more than 30 superdelegates declared for Obama. He is ahead in the polls against her, and, they show, would beat McCain by a better margin. In the circumstances, the dubious argument that the superdelegates should defy the will of the party grass roots to save the party from itself may be fine in theory. But, in practice, if that means denying the hugely inspirational, first serious black contender his crack at the title, the damage to the credibility of the nominating process, and consequent retreat from engagement of so many new voters, would probably make such an act deeply counterproductive.
It looks particularly strange for Clinton to insist that she is not withdrawing from the final primaries in order to maximise participation in the process, while at the same time arguing that the popular vote should be overruled by the party's bigwigs.
Key donors and senior Democrats are privately asking her why she insists on continuing a fight that seems to serve only to further divide the party and cast doubts on Obama's fitness for office. The continuing battle distorts the real election debate, grossly exaggerating the political differences between Democratic rivals when the focus should be on McCain. There is no doubt that Clinton has fought a magnificent fight that has helped to redynamise the prospects of the party and would have made a tremendous candidate, even president. But the time has come to stand aside.