It's Still Not Over

Anybody who thought tonight would wrap up the Democratic presidential nomination was always subject to wishful thinking. Obama would've had to have completely blown Hillary out of the water for her to have gone home, and that never looked to have been likely in the least. In fact, tonight has worked out pretty much like it was billed. Except for a couple of days on Zogby, Hillary was always in the lead in Ohio. Rhode Island was tracked less closely, but it was always expected to go to Hillary. On the other hand, Vermont, also lightly tracked, was expected to go heavily toward Obama, just as it did. Texas always appeared to be neck and neck and--hey, look!--it is. We're where we always should've thought we'd be, at least if we were paying attention. This day doesn't really change much of anything.

A lot has been written today in Greater Blogsylvania about Jonathan Alter's piece online at Newsweek explaining about how Hillary can do marvelously well and still fall short of a majority of pledged delegates. While that's true as far as it goes, I'm not sure that matters at all. At this point, Hillary's not going for a knock out. She wants a brokered convention. If she can survive the first vote or two at the convention itself, all delegates become free to vote their consciences, and then who knows what can happen. Hillary doesn't care if she catches up to Obama. She just wants to keep her candidacy alive--and to keep Obama from collecting enough delegates to clinch it himself--and tonight is a big step in that direction. She's not ready to go anywhere just yet.