Hillary's worst week

"Even if she doesn't realise it", David Brooks claims in his New York Times column today, Hillary Clinton has "just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign".

Despite conventional wisdom - and Hillary's increasing opinion poll lead in advance of the 22nd April Pennsylvania primary - suggesting that her campaign is finally getting back on track after months of ineptitude and failure, Brooks' three key arguments as to why her campaign is effectively over are fundamentally sound.

1. Team Hillary may well have been almost giddy with excitement at the negative press generated by video footage of Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright making allegedly anti-American remarks but his artful response to the controversy, a speech in which he addressed issues surrounding his faith and racial tensions in the United States, appears to have strengthened rather than damaged his campaign.  A poll conducted by CBS News shows that 71% of voters think Obama did "a good job explaining his relationship with Wright" with the number of people agreeing that Obama would "unite the country" increasing from 52% to 67% in the past month.  Nationwide polls show Obama continuing to hold a slim lead over Clinton.  Clearly, no lasting damage has been done.
2. Attempts to force a re-vote in the Hillary-friendly states of Michigan and Florida have stalled.  The Democratic National Committee has barred delegates from the two states from attending the Presidential nominating convention after violating the committee's rules on the timing of their primaries.  As a result of this, Hillary can kiss goodbye to securing the delegates of the country's 4th and 8th largest states.
3. Given that it is almost impossible for Hillary to win the nomination on the strength of primary votes even if she does win the remainder of the primaries by convincing margins, her campaign has become reliant on the support of ex-officio "superdelegates" (mainly party bosses, Senators and Congressmen).  As Brooks notes in his article, "superdelegates" have now coalesced around the view that "that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination". 

Give it up, Hillary.  It ain't going to happen.

You can view the whole piece here.