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….They deserve each other.

While scrolling down the Huffington Post’s homepage I read the following headline last night, a link to an International Herald Tribune article: “Hillary’s Next Must-Win: Indiana.”
A few things I know are true:

1) It’s more or less impossible for Clinton to catch up in pledged delegates. But the less ground she gains in the remaining contests, the harder it will be for her to catch up where it’s still nominally possible, in superdelegates.

2) Indiana has fewer delegates in play than the other state that votes on May 6th: North Carolina.

3) Clinton is going to get trucked in North Carolina.

So I ask you: Why is Indiana her “next must-win?” It seems to me that she really “must win” every state. Isn’t it awfully convenient that her next “must-win” is one of only a few remaining medium-sized states that she might, or even is likely to, win?

I think the answer goes like this: The Clinton campaign has done a masterful job making the case that she really only needs to win states that she is expected to win in the first place. By this logic, she hasn’t lost since Iowa! Remember how Obama’s victories in ten consecutive states after a moderately suprising success on Super Tuesday didn’t really count, but moderate Clinton victories in Ohio and Texas (well, forget Texas: Obama actually won more delegates) were crucial, heroic, comeback-kid performances? The networks, naturally, ate it up–it’s a big flowery tree of money for them.

So I think that the only sense in which this was a “must-win” was that if she lost, the media would have packed up and acknowledged that it’s over–and that is what determines the lifespan of this campaign.

So I want to open this up to discussion, since not even I care much what I think. I’d especially like to hear from some folks who are more sympathetic to the Clinton cause that I am by now (no point trying to hide that). Is there any reason to believe that she can win the nomination at this point? Voters aren’t dumb, even if the media is (are, I know, but that makes it sound like TVs and radios can think), and they still seem to be voting for Clinton in significant numbers, including, last night, a big majority. But does anyone still think she can win? And does anyone still think that she should?

(Let me preempt one possible answer to that latter question. If the argument is electability–that Obama can’t beat McCain in the general election–it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, or rather a Clinton-fulfilling prophecy. The biggest reason why Obama looks more and more nationally unpalatable is that Clinton is doing her damndest to make it so. It’s a matter of perception, like everything else, and she’s displayed a remarkable ability to overpower our own abilities of perception with her own versions. It’s because she’s a good politician–one can’t help but admire that on one level, despise it on another. This also plays into my single biggest fear about the “elitist” thing–that some people will use that as an intellectual excuse–a post hoc rationalization–through which they can interpret their latent discomfort with a black candidate in a less morally troubling way. Of course, that’s possible and certainly happening in voters’ minds with respect to a woman candidate, but I don’t think Obama has nursed those kinds of moral end-runs the way Clinton has. Of course, that’s just a crackpot theory, and quite paranoid–or is it? Of the voters who said that race mattered in the Penn. primary, 69% went for Clinton. This undercuts my argument in the sense that that is an explicit admission, but it’s an interesting statistic. Or is it? Oy, vey.) 

Quick aside, in closing: “Liberal Thought” is a preposterous title for this blog. I didn’t come up with it. But it will be a significantly more preposterous blog if the “thought” is only “liberal,” or worse, only my own. So I beg challenges to everything I say, from my right, obviously, but also from my left. Also, if I do anything resembling “thought,” let me know, and I’ll stop right away.