It's Over. And the Clinton's Know It.

They've been hinting that they know this with where they have been choosing to focus their campaign, but now the Clinton camp are being much more specific: she CAN'T win the delegate count - and for the first time they are beginning to acknowledge this in their public utterances.

"If Sen. Obama wins the popular vote then the choice will be easier. But if Hillary wins the popular vote but can't quite catch up with the delegate votes, then you have to just ask yourself, 'Which is more important, and who is more likely to win in November?'” former President Bill Clinton told ABC earlier this week.

"Let's assume that Sen. Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count," he said in a March 13 conference call with reporters. He then asked, “Which is more Democratic”: the measure of delegates won or of votes received.

Now, as Obama currently leads in the popular vote by more than 700,000 votes, Clinton's task is nigh impossible, as many commentators are starting to note.

Mark Halperin has written an article entitled, "Painful Things Hillary Knows - Or should Know".

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.

2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.

3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.

4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don’t think she can win and want her to give up. Same with superdelegate-to-the-stars Donna Brazile.

He lists 14 reasons why Hillary should give up and they are all equally as valid as the four that I have listed. But the important thing is that the press are, at last, starting to talk about this realistically. For weeks now we have had to listen to garbage about how both the candidates were essentially tied and this reached it's peak with the fevered reaction to Hillary's wins in Texas and Ohio when she was portrayed as "the Comeback Kid" despite the fact that the victory she had achieved was woefully short of what was actually required in order to reverse Obama's delegate lead. If the press were paying any attention to what was actually happening they would have written her obituary then.

However, now the stories are starting to circulate which more realistically tell the tale of Clinton's chances and even die in the wool Clinton fanatics like Taylor Marsh have started to admit that there is a "maths problem".

There is a "maths problem", she can't win the nomination, and the longer she stays in this race the more she hurts Barack Obama.

Jonathan Alter was writing about this even before the Texas and Ohio elections:

Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There's only one problem with this analysis: they can't count.

This has been over, as many of us said at the time, since March 5th. Hillary stumbles on, but to where?

Even Bill is now stating publicly that she can't win the delegate count and they are now hanging all their hopes on overturning Obama's massive 700,000 vote lead. With the Florida and Michigan recounts now seeming ever more remote, Hillary simply has no chance of being able to do that.

I've said it before, but it's long past the time when the men in grey suits need to sit Hillary down and explain to her that, this time, it really is over.

Do the decent thing and stand down.

UPDATE:

Ezra Klein also puts in his tuppence worth:

Let me second what Kevin Drum says here. I don't think you need to reach for far-out explanations to explain the continuation and ferocity of the Clinton Campaign. Rather, you just need an old political maxim: All campaigns look winnable to the people inside them. Just ask Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Dennis Kucinich. Ask Steve Forbes, Pat Robertson, Elizabeth Dole, and Dan Quayle. And Clinton's star power, and her lead in Pennsylvania, and the videos of Wright, and all the other disparate data points that exist in an election this large mean there's more than enough information for her to construct a plausible internal narrative explaining how she wins this thing. And for a candidate who's come so far and gotten so close, admitting defeat requires a pretty enormous psychological shift.

Now, I think she's wrong. I think Obama's lead in pledged delegates and his lead in the popular vote effectively end her chances.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, US election 2008, Democratic presidential nominee