The Note: Hope Against Hope

March 31, 2008 -- Math, it turns out, is as stubborn as the Clintons themselves.

The superdelegates are moving (and suddenly not so super-slowly) in Obama's direction. (Which of these drips will trigger the flood?)

Wright was wrong for Sen. Barack Obama, but not wrong enough, evidently. (We look forward to hearing from the Clinton campaign why polls once again don't matter.)

Campaign debts are piling up faster than Bill Clinton and James Carville can pile on homespun expressions.

And Sen. John McCain can enjoy the show, his ticket punched and his image his own as he defines himself and the race in a way the Democrats can't.

It is, naturally, set up just as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants it. (Just ask Camp Clinton -- always sure she can go all the way, even when it isn't Opening Day.)

The Clinton line this Monday: This is a candidate who's performed best when she's counted out. In this pause in the voting action, she's staying strong in polls in the next round of states, weathering calls to step aside -- and using them as rallying cries/organizing tools.

All of which could matter quite a bit if this was still a traditional race, wielded over that quaint quantity known as voters.

But the current Clinton calculus states that a race for delegates is not about the delegates anymore, a contest for votes is maybe not about the popular vote. (And some of her wins are turning out not to really be wins).

And there's a fair chance she'll have to destroy the Democratic Party in her quest to save it. At this critical juncture, Clinton is choosing confrontation over conciliation.

It's one reason that the superdelegate gap is narrowing by the day (the Obama campaign's impressive discipline in rolling out endorsements is the other). Joining Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., on the Obama bandwagon is Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and the entire seven-member North Carolina Democratic House delegation is set to endorse Obama as well, Jackie Calmes reports in The Wall Street Journal.

"Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama's side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up," Calmes writes. Among Clinton's difficulties: "Even raising the prospect of a convention fight could backfire for Sen. Clinton by antagonizing the superdelegates she needs. Many superdelegates are on the ballot themselves this year, and the last thing they want is a chaotic convention that plays into the hands of Republicans."

(The latest endorsements make for a 64-9 Obama superdelegate advantage since Super Tuesday, Diane Sawyer reported on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday.)

For a hint as to why, pause to consider the full implications of what Clinton is saying with her promise to march forward through Denver:

"I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan," Clinton told Perry Bacon Jr. and Anne Kornblut of The Washington Post, offering a whole of "ands." "And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for."

(Just for fun, try to find five uncommitted superdelegates who are looking forward to a credentials fight at the party's quadrennial televised showcase. The only way long movies work is with happy endings; "Gigli" clocked in at a squirm-inducing 121 minutes.)

Former President Bill Clinton may want superdelegates to "chill out," but it's the frosty campaign being waged by his wife and her rival that has Democrats anxious.

Obama, D-Ill., doesn't need to apply pressure that's building from within.

Gauge the prevalence of this sentiment inside the party and you may have a good read on where to find the party's endgame: "This thing has turned from being an adventure to being a grind," Democratic strategist Bob Shrum tells the Los Angeles Times.

Fortunately for Clinton, Nora Ephron isn't a superdelegate. "It's turned into an unending last episode of Survivor," she writes for HuffingtonPost. "They're eating rats and they're frying bugs, and they're frying rats and they're eating bugs; no one is ever going to get off the island and I can't take it any more."

Now that the saga of Rev. Jeremiah Wright has played out, we'll see if this inspires a Mark Penn memo: "Barack Obama has extended his lead over Hillary Clinton among Democrats nationally to 52% to 42%, the third consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking report in which he has held a statistically significant lead, and Obama's largest lead of the year so far. . . . This marks the first time either candidate has held a double-digit lead over the other since Feb. 4-6, at which point Clinton led Obama by 11 percentage points."

"For all their delight in soaring voter registration and strong poll numbers, some Democrats fear the contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton might have a nightmarish end, which could wreck a promising election year," the AP's Chuck Babington writes.

If Clinton wins a few more contests, Babington writes, "Party leaders then would face a wrenching choice: Steer the nomination to a fading Obama, even as signs suggested Clinton could be the stronger candidate in November; or go with the surging Clinton and risk infuriating Obama's supporters, especially blacks, the Democratic Party's most loyal base."

By vowing to fight for Florida and Michigan all the way to the convention, Clinton is "deliberately setting up a train wreck, hoping that by credibly committing to the idea that she's happy to sink the party's fortunes in FL and MI if she doesn't get her way, she can thereby get her way," Matthew Yglesias writes in his Atlantic blog. "Basically, it's the same old kind of threats you saw with her big dollar fundraisers -- either the Democratic Party needs to serve the narrow needs of the Clinton family, or else the Clinton family will do their best to hobble the party."

And so: "Despite Bill Clinton's saying it was 'a bunch of bull' that his wife should drop out, Democrats are trying to sneak up on Hillary, throw a burlap sack over her head, carry her off the field and stick her in a Saddam spider hole until after the Denver convention," Maureen Dowd writes in her Sunday New York Times op-ed. "One Obama adviser moaned that the race was "beginning to feel like a hostage crisis" and would probably go on for another month to six weeks."

Yet tell this to senators Patrick Leahy and Bob Casey: "But it is always when Hillary is pushed back by the boys that women help hoist her up," Dowd writes.