Just in time for the campaign trail lull that will accompany Easter weekend, a new meme began catching hold today among some Hillary Clinton watchers. Short version: The end may be nigh.

It actually started Thursday, when the New York Times frontpaged an analysis blandly headlined, “Clinton Facing Narrower Path to Nomination.” Detailing the breaks she absolutely, positively needs to wrest the nomination away from Barack Obama, the story’s bottom line:
“[A]ll this has seemed something of a long shot since her defeats in February. But that shot seems to have grown a little longer.”

Slate Magazine quickly picked up on the new CW: “The question is, who is going to tell Hillary it’s over? Certainly not Bill. Certainly not her aides.”

The notion kept gaining traction. Time magazine’s Mark Halperin listed 14 “painful things Hillary Clinton knows — or should know.” Among them: “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.”

Finally, Politico.com went kinda meta on the question, putting it in the context of the sausage machine that covering a campaign often becomes, explaining why Clinton “has virtually no chance of winning” — and why that bpottom line hasn’t taken hold more widely in the media.

Bottom line:
“Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

“People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

“As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.”

Sure, this CW may evaporate over the weekend, gather steam or be replaced by a 180-degree switcheroo, in which the pundits proclaim yet another Clinton comeback. But for now, it’s out there.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Presidential. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.