The Note: Whispered Shouts

May 8, 2008 -- Who is more stubborn -- the uncommitted superdelegates, the Clintons, or the math?

Who has the most to lose if the Democratic race lingers -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bill Clinton, or Sen. Barack Obama?

Who has the most to gain -- Sen. Clinton, Obama, or McCain? (Think for four years or so before answering that one.)

Who is Obama running against now -- Clinton, McCain, or himself?

Will we see an exit that's a Mitt Romney (crisp and timely), a Mike Huckabee (a few weeks too late), or a Ron Paul (non-existent)?

Fortunately, the Democratic Party has seen fit to empower superdegates to sort out such questions. And as everyone takes a breath in this new stage of the campaign, the flood has been stalled -- but enough lips are moving to keep the water churning.

It means, perhaps oddly, that the clash of the titans is set to become a kinder, gentler campaign. For Clinton, the surest way to end the race now would be to attack. Obama also benefits from non-engagement: The more he can ignore Clinton and look forward to his battle with McCain, the less hard work we has to do later.

To the math: Four superdelegates -- including a switcher from Clinton -- joined the Obama train on Wednesday, putting Obama within three in the tally of party insiders, per ABC's count. (He trailed by 60 as recently as Super Tuesday.)

That doesn't count former senator George McGovern, D-S.D., whose switch to Obama on the even of Clinton's visit to South Dakota may get a mention or two for another day.

It also doesn't count the dozens of party leaders who are offering carefully calibrated -- if unsolicited -- advice. (If you listen carefully, you'll hear a drumbeat.)

"What I think a lot of us are worried about is the grinding and grinding on with this, and how tough it's going to be to come back and run a top-notch campaign in the fall," Gov. Phil Bredesen, D-Tenn., an uncommitted superdelegate, tells Bloomberg's Heidi Przybyla and Laura Litvan. "In a good marriage it's OK to fight, but there are just things you don't say and places you don't go and can't get back from."

"Her only leg to stand on with the superdelegates was to win the popular vote," Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., another uncommitted superdelegate, tells Roll Call.

"The air is completely let out of them," Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., also uncommitted in the race, told The Wall Street Journal about his congressional colleagues who support Clinton. "They are resigned to the fact that it's probably not going to work out."

Even staunch supporters want an explanation: "I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday. "I think we need to prevent that as much as we can."

"I urge her to take the day off and think very seriously about doing what's best for the country and best for the party," Clinton supporter Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., told The Hill. "I got straight A's in math."

"It's improbable to suggest she'd be at the top of the ticket," says another Clinton backer, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla.

"It's her decision to make and I'll accept what decision she makes," said a suddenly less-than-voluble Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

As the rug gets tugged out from under Clinton's feet, Obama tries to grab a corner of it Thursday on Capitol Hill, when he meets behind closed doors with superdelegates. Clinton, meanwhile, hits three time zones on the trail -- and maybe-still-happy warrior who, deep down, knows the realities of the race.

This is one case where whispers are being heard as if they're shouts: The superdelegates don't have to go public to push Clinton -- yet (though how long before those who might want a spot on the ticket see the value of a well-timed shove?). And the message from the Obama campaign is sharper for being lighter.

"There was no shortage of other ways to signal, suggest, insinuate or instigate the same thing," AP's David Espo writes. "And certainly no need to apply unseemly pressure to a historic political figure, a woman who has run a grueling race, won millions of votes and drawn uncounted numbers of new Democratic voters to the polls."

Democrats are (mostly) giving the Clintons the space they've earned. But "whethers" are becoming "whens," and don't think the Clinton campaign doesn't get it -- most of the campaign, anyway.

"Some Clinton advisers were resigned to their candidate's likely loss. They have turned in favor of her bowing out for party unity, according to several who asked not to be named," The Wall Street Journal's Jackie Calmes and Susan Davis write. "Only a few are said to be urging her to fight on, even to the Aug. 25-28 convention in Denver. Among these voices, the loudest belongs to her husband, former President Clinton, according to one longtime Democratic Party insider and Clinton supporter."

"Clinton advisers hope to ride out the rest of the week, knowing there will be talk about whether she will quit the race," per The Washington Post's Dan Balz, Anne Kornblut, and Perry Bacon Jr. "They think that a big victory in West Virginia would give her a new platform to make a case for herself."

But one Clinton adviser sums up the challenge: "If the supers weren't buying it before, it's hard to see how they'll buy it now."

That hastily arranged event in West Virginia Wednesday was all about symbolism; the likeliest scenario still keeps Clinton in through the final contests, June 3.

"You can turn elections in a day," Clinton said Wednesday night at a fundraiser in Washington, per ABC's Eloise Harper. "Too many people have fought too hard to see a woman in this race."

She makes her case in an interview with USA Today's Kathy Kiely and Jill Lawrence, and it's rather patently about race: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," Clinton said, arguing that "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."