Campaigning yesterday in Milbank, S.D., Bill Clinton effectively declared the race over ,saying, “[T]his may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign ofthis kind.” Clinton’s advance team was told its work was done. Herschedule remains empty after Tuesday night. Even if she doesn’t bidfarewell tonight, Clinton and everyone around her know her chances area near-nothing of 0.1 percent . (It would be zero, but she still hasn’t dropped out .) She is asymptotically dead.
So today is less about what than how . How Obama is going to roll out the necessary delegates to reach the “magic number” of 2,118. How (and when) Clinton is officially going to concede. How she is going to transition into the “healing” phase of the general election.
Still,the day’s news has been an ongoing game of “will she or won’t she?”This morning, the Associated Press reported that Clinton campaignofficials said she would concede Tuesday night that Obama has thedelegates to secure the Democratic nomination. The Clinton camp quickly denied the report. (Disagreement in Hillaryland? Never!) So the AP took a different tack, declaring the race over based on a tally of public commitments and “more than adozen private commitments.” But seeing as the superdelegate metric hasalways been about public commitments, it’s unclear why that’s news. …
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch .
