Fork-Sticking Time

She's done.

Senator Clinton didn't win Indiana big enough, and she wasn't competitive in North Carolina.

The interesting question is why Hillary performed somewhat under expectations in Indiana. She should have done well there. True, it's close to Illinois (St. Barack's home territory), but Indiana was chock-full of the kind of voters Mrs. Clinton has done well with . My horseback guess would be that committed Democrats have become worried about how much the continuance of the primary struggle has damaged the party's November prospects, and that some likely Hillary supporters held their noses and voted Obama to end it.

Frankly, this doesn't bode well for Republican prospects this fall. They have to find a way to split off some Democrats or "Independents." Wretchard, writing at Belmont Club, brilliantly states the conservative problem:

It's a safe bet that Hillary and Bill are probably at low tide tonight. There's probably unease among conservatives too. Barack Obama has demonstrated that "reasons" to vote against him are not enough. They count, but they count less than they rationally should. He's riding an emotional tide in a weather system where logic is the smallest of zephyrs. Obama is the candidate of feeling. The expression of a mood. What he is in and of himself has proved less important than his symbolism.

To successfully combat Obama conservatives will need more than reasons. They'll need a cause. A reason to believe. What remains to be seen is whether John McCain can provide one.

This sort of thinking may come hard to John McCain: who is only to a limited degree a man of causes. What cause can Republicans come up with ? More fundamentally, how can a man who has seen life from the sharp end -- from a cell in the Hanoi Hilton -- stand up to the "candidate of feeling ?" How can the original straight-talk Maverick compete with Mr. Unity offering "change we can believe in ?" Only by making people read St. Barack's fine print; by letting St. Barack, his record and his personal history do our convincing for us. Senator Clinton has done much to show us the way here, but Senator McCain is, very likely, not going to want to do that.

As for Senator Clinton, my guess would be that she will try to stick it out through the end of the month, assuming the money holds up and pray for another Wright scandal. Given that she's asking supporters for cash, the campaign's probably running on fumes already.

In any case, it's over.