Will Tomorrow Close Out the Nomination?

In a word, no. Obama's not going to blow Clinton away, and Clinton is not going to knock out Obama. Clinton will win Indiana, though not by the margin she once led in the polls, and Obama will win North Carolina, though with a lower margin of victory than he once promised. One of them will gain a little bit on the other (Eric Kleefeld at TPM Election Central predicts that Obama will do a shade better than Clinton, and I don't really have any argument with that). So it'll all be a wash, right?

Of course not. A mathematical wash clearly works for Obama. Clinton has to make up lost ground, so every chance that passes without her making up some amount of ground means that she's got an even steeper climb from here on out. We're not very far from running out of states, and if we run out of states before Clinton catches up with Obama, then I'm not sure what kind of winning game plan she can come up with. To be completely clear, though, I do know what kind of losing game plan she'll come up with--convince already committed Obama delegates to jump ship. Whether she can pull such a stunt off or not (and I'd be shocked if she did), that's a sure way to bring the party together for the fall.