The View from the Couch: The Party's Over

It's over, at last. The Indiana primary, that is, not Hillary Clinton's march to the Oval Office, though most every outlet has called it quits for the Senator. Their proof, though not often mentioned, is that she has been loaning her campaign more of Bill's lavish, unspeakably high, speaking fees. But she still won Indiana and by winning, however closely, helped Jill Long Thompson to win, however closely, the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, giving her the chance to go up against MY MAN MITCH. "Jillary" was the true insurgent candidate, not supported by the state's Democratic establishment and will give MMM a fight, though he will be able to swamp her with money. But she has a chance, whereas the architect would just have gone through the motions, waiting to get back to his lucrative work. So women had an effect in the Indiana primary, but not enough of an effect to give Hillary Clinton an impressive victory, just a victory. North Carolina was a different case for Obama, but who cares about North Carolina? It has been a Republican state for a number of presidential races. Bush beat Kerry there by over 400 thousand votes in 2004, a 12 percent spread. Does Barack Obama expect to find that amount of new votes for himself there in November? This remains the heart of the Hillary Clinton argument to the Superdelegates to throw their lot with her. I won the states that matter; he didn't. And there's some truth to that. Save Illinois, she has taken most of the big states that Democrats need to win. When one looks at a map of the 2004 election (here's one: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/president/ ) Kerry's states look like just a handful. It is always a surprise to realize Kerry would have won the election had he been able to win Ohio. In the primary contests Hillary Clinton won the contiguous sweep of New York state, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana. Obama won Illinois and Wisconsin. Of course, it is likely Michigan and Florida would have gone, as they sort of did, to Clinton, had the states not altered their primary dates. Again, the Democratic primary season has been haunted by the Ghost of 2000. Obama looks like Gore: he wins the cities and the college towns; and Clinton looks like Bush. She wins the open spaces. That's how Indiana went, as well as most of the states Obama has won. Ties are ties. Obama does look like the putative nominee to be, but he will have a hard time of it in the states Democrats shouldn't have a hard time in. And it certainly isn't clear what Hillary's exit strategy is, if any. But I'm sure she's considering one now. Here's my version of what it may be.