The game-changer

Last night's primary results are in, and Betsy correctly calls them a game-changer

With a decisive loss in North Carolina and just a narrow win in Indiana, I don't see how Clinton can even make a straight-faced argument to the superdelegates that she should be the real winner in this nomination fight.

Rick Moran, writing at Pajamas Media, asks,

Is this the end of the line for Hillary Clinton? The consensus among the talking heads on cable appears to be coalescing around the idea that she should wind her campaign down and get out of Obama’s way. No doubt it will be an extremely difficult and emotional decision. She has fought as hard as any candidate I have ever seen for the nomination. But the votes aren’t there, the money’s not available, and time has run out.

Hillary right now has to weigh wheter she's going to hold on for long enough to pull an October surprise, or give up.

There are two big factors:

1. The loss of power factor: Richard Fernandez wonders,

Hillary's decision will probably hinge on whether she can afford to give up now, having gone so far. In the early days of aviation, pilots who attempted to cross oceanic distances would calculate a "point of no return" beyond which it made no sense to turn back. Hillary crossed that line long ago. Against the uncertainties of going on against Obama is the equally bleak prospect of returning to a diminished political future -- sans reputation, sans friends, and sans the protection of the Oval Office.

She has lived all her adult life trying to get herself elected President of the United States. She's counting on thousands of women who stood by their men to stand by her.

2. The Obama's unscripted words factor: With Obama's penchant for putting his foot in his mouth

"The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one. He can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that is not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet... He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our addiction for oil by making automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That's the change we need."

Hillary might (yet) still find inspiration to carry on.



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