It's Coming: Obama/Clinton

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

This comes from a gut feeling and scattered anecdotal evidence as much as hard facts, but I think the eventual denouement to the Democratic bloodbath is finally coming into focus: Well before the convention it will be Obama/Clinton -- assuming that, in the interlude, Hillary doesn't overplay her losing hand even more egregiously than she already has.

At first Clinton's inevitability-campaign was realistically grounded. It didn't seem that anyone could possibly compete in money or name ID or party-insider connections. Those were her halcyon days of wine and roses; nary a worry in the offing on the road to the nomination.

But someone did compete. Boy, did he ever. So after being outvoted and out-moneyed for weeks on end, the Clinton campaign recently resorted in desperation to a laughably transparent, faux inevitability -- dropping unsubtle hints that sure, it would be happy to ponder a Clinton/Obama ticket. Nothing has changed, to hear the Clinton camp tell it, except Hillary's newly inflated willingness to embrace this pesky upstart.

For a few days Clinton's tactical chutzpah nearly smothered the indelible reality. But gradually, like an aggressive antibiotic, the imposing reality began to kick in again among the pace-setting, television-network commentariat class. One now hears it with increasing frequency: Wait a minute. Obama is ahead. Sorry, folks, we sort of lost ourselves in all the spin, but both feet are now back on Earth.

Wyoming was the first cold douse of reality revisited; Mississippi in two days will be the next. And Pennsylvania -- six long, grueling, agonizing weeks away -- will put a bow on it, but not until its intervening and needless agony causes sufficient superdelegates to finally and preemptively announce that enough is enough. Between now and April 22, look for the Obama train to take on a lot more superdelegate passengers.

For they really and quite simply have no choice, both realistically and politically speaking.

Numbers are numbers. Already more than two-thirds of the states have cast primary or caucus ballots, and Obama not only possesses but is sure to maintain a decisive lead in derived pledged delegates. There aren't enough states left for Clinton to compensate, and that's an insurmountable fact of the electoral future.

Moreover, and just as critical, Obama maintains a lead in the amassed popular vote. If anything could have done lethal harm to Obama's argument -- and it is just an argument, by the way, not any attempted "change" in rules -- that whoever leads in pledged delegates should properly secure the loyalty of superdelegates, it would have been an offsetting popular-vote plurality by Clinton. But she's been unable to produce one, and the history of the past two-and-a-half months strongly suggests a continuation of the popular status quo.

Those are the realistically speaking parts. And politically speaking there is no way -- absolutely no way, so we should all just put it out of our minds right now as part of our tough-love reality check -- that several hundred tuned-in superdelegates with a self-interested eye to the future are going to defy both the popular and pledged-delegate will.

Furthermore, and perfectly aside from the numerically ethical argument, superdelegates are worried about more than just who captures the nomination per se. They worry, of course, about their own turf. And the Obama campaign's selling point that it will "provide a better climate for down-ballot candidates" is as profoundly persuasive as it is self-interested itself.

So as Clinton and Obama needlessly spill more blood in Pennsylvania, watch for an announced-superdelegate shift meant to signal to voters that though blood there may be, it is, in reality, all over.

And watch as well for a corresponding sales pitch from the Obama camp: It's true that Clinton is conducting a scorched-earth campaign of GOP design and dimensions, calling into question Obama's experience, trustworthiness and, most squalidly, his fitness as commander in chief; and it's further true that for at least the past several days John McCain has had no better friend than the Democratic senator from New York. But politics is about bending and moving on, and the best possible bend at this point is that sure, he'll stoop to embrace Hillary as veep.

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THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter