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COLUMBUS, OHIO — As the results first trickled, then finally poured in at the Clinton rally, staff grinned confidently and the crowd was ebullient.
Rhode Island was hers. And when Ohio went her way, people went crazy. Hillary Clinton has finally ended Barack Obama's unbroken string of wins. The consensus in the room was emphatic. This tournament is headed to Pennsylvania.
But then there was Texas. The Lone Star State is even bigger than Ohio (228 delegates to 161), and it looked to be, for all intents and purposes, a dead heat, whatever the final numbers showed. And Vermont went for Mr. Obama by more than 20 points.
The Comeback Kid keeps coming back and back, at least in her mind and those of her supporters. Nonetheless, the conclusion of a cold-light-of-day analysis remains stark: Winning conditions are waning for Ms. Clinton.
She needed to win big last night. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, said she needed to take both Texas and Ohio. But once every number is crunched, she will pick up, at best, a handful of delegates.
The proportional method of apportioning delegates that the Democratic Party employs is to blame. And that, in the end, made last night not a good night.
All the Super Tuesdays are over. There simply aren't enough winnable states left for Ms. Clinton to eliminate the lead in pledged delegates that Mr. Obama still enjoys.
Because Ms. Clinton cannot go to the convention in Denver at the end of August leading in pledged delegate support, she and her advisers must accept that her prospects for victory remain slim.
Different organizations use different formulas to calculate pledged and superdelegate totals. Let's use The New York Times numbers, which are among the most conservative.
The Times gave Mr. Obama a lead of 133 in pledged delegates, going into last night's contests. Ms. Clinton currently enjoys a lead of 33 among superdelegates who have declared their intent. That lead has been steadily shrinking as more and more superdelegates declare their support for Mr. Obama. (Two superdelegates declared for him yesterday.) Mr. Obama thus currently enjoys a lead of 100 delegates overall.
Last night's results suggested that his lead will remain substantially intact. Let's assume that the superdelegate differential remains unchanged over the coming months. The next two contests are the Wyoming caucuses (March 8, 18 delegates) and the Mississippi primary (March 11, 40 delegates). Mr. Obama traditionally outperforms Ms. Clinton in caucuses, while Mississippi's large black population virtually guarantees that he will have a strong showing there.
That means that the Democrats will arrive at the next big primary, Pennsylvania (April 22, 188 delegates) with Mr. Obama's lead, in all likelihood, essentially unchanged from what it was before last night. If you include Pennsylvania and all the other remaining states, there are only 656 pledged delegates available. Ms. Clinton would need to win roughly two-thirds of the pledged delegates in the remaining contests to get ahead of Mr. Obama. And some of those states, especially North Carolina (May 6, 134 delegates) have to be considered Obama states.
That is why there is virtually no practical possibility of Ms. Clinton eliminating the pledged delegate gap. Her best remaining hope would be to persuade the Democratic National Committee to seat the banned Michigan and Florida delegates. She won big in those states, but the races were not contested because the states broke the rules by holding their primaries in January.
The DNC leadership might agree to hold fresh primaries in Florida and Michigan, but it will never seat the existing delegates, and it is highly unlikely that there is a judge to be found who would force them. (The courts generally refuse to interfere in the internal workings of political parties.) That leaves only one possibility: a massive surge of support for Ms. Clinton among superdelegates. But as long as she remains behind in the pledged delegate count, that surge is improbable.
In fact, quite the opposite may well happen, as superdelegates rally behind the front-running candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and lend their voices to the calls for Ms. Clinton not to drag this out to the Denver convention at the end of August.
Bottom line: There isn't a convincing scenario that ends with Ms. Clinton winning, no matter what Ohio might say.
Nonetheless, she is as determined a candidate as she is capable, and last night's results make Pennsylvania and beyond an inevitability.
“The people of Ohio have said it loudly and clearly, we're going on. We're going strong. And we're going all the way!” Ms. Clinton vowed last night, and you had to believe her.
At some point, this is going to start to hurt the Democrats' chances of victory in November, especially if each campaign steps up its attacks on the other, as will certainly happen.
The Republicans have finally certified that John McCain is their nominee, thanks to wins in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. Last night, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee graciously stepped down. From now on, Mr. McCain will run a national campaign for the presidency, while the Democrats continue to fight it out, state by state.
So whether or not last night was a moral, tactical or even real victory for Hillary Clinton, it came at a cost, for her own prospects and those of her party.
