The Note: Mountain Hazard

May 14, 2008 -- What happens when a race that's over doesn't act like it?

West Virginia doesn't change any games -- but the fact that the game is still being played is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's victory, at least for the day. If she needed any excuses to stick around a little while longer, she found them in a Mountain State landslide. (And if Republicans needed any excuses to go into outright panic mode, they found them in deep-red Mississippi on Tuesday.)

Clinton, D-N.Y., gets fresh ammunition for her final argument to the superdelegates -- and just maybe enough fresh cash to fund three more weeks of this.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., hits a 41-point speed bump on his road to the nomination -- a fresh reminder that there's something just plain missing from his appeal to Democrats. (And consider this a response in his "national conversation" about race -- don't say he didn't ask for it.)

One week after the press essentially declared him the nominee, two-thirds of Democratic voters in a swing state said thanks, but no thanks. It may matter approximately not at all in determining the nomination -- but as Obama looks toward the general, these are warning signs he can't hope away.

And with Clinton still trying to win this thing, she'll be there to remind him -- and the supers -- about it.

"Clinton advisers hoped the size of Clinton's victory and signs of dissatisfaction with Obama among West Virginia voters would reopen a conversation about who is the stronger Democrat to take on Sen. John McCain," Dan Balz writes in mapping Clinton's narrow road back, in The Washington Post. "They also hoped the results would tamp down talk that Clinton should consider dropping out of the nomination contest before the primaries end on June 3 to speed the process of uniting Democrats."

"It's like a shot of Red Bull to get her few these next couple weeks," ABC's George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" Wednesday (and maybe she's heard of the energy drink by now). "The problem is, it doesn't change the fundamental delegate math."

Obama still needs to win only about a third of the remaining delegates to capture the nomination; using the DNC's magic number of 2,025, he's just 140 delegates away from clinching, not counting Wednesday's superdelegate haul, per ABC political director David Chalian.

Obama remains the prohibitive frontrunner -- and is still on track to clinch a majority of pledged delegates next week. Whoever controls the next batch of supers controls the narrative of the days before then (and Obama rolls out the first ones Wednesday morning -- Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., and Democrats Abroad Chair Christine Schon Marques, just to start the campaign's day out right).

"Grit, she's got. Numbers, she don't," Lynn Sweet writes in the Chicago Sun-Times.

That meeting of top Clinton fundraisers Wednesday in Washington should at least be a little upbeat, given the the fresh talking points the stay-in-the-race camp is now armed with. But expect at least a few tough questions for the senator and her team.

We'll hear more about the popular vote -- Clinton's ahead again if (and only if) you count the less-than-clean contest in Florida and the downright meaningless tally from Michigan.

"Clinton is no longer resting her candidacy on the delegate count," Mark Z. Barabak and Faye Fiore write in the Los Angeles Times. "She hopes to persuade party leaders, who hold the balance of power, that she would be the more electable candidate against McCain, based on her support among white, blue-collar voters who have not embraced Obama's candidacy in the same way as black, more affluent and better-educated voters."

At the very least, the campaign gets another week or three. USA Today's Susan Page calls Clinton's win "personally satisfying" for her -- but probably too late to matter. After lots of calendar-circling, mark down June 3, in pen.

"I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard," Clinton said.

It's hard to imagine many more wins this wide and deep, yet Clinton picked up only 12 additional delegates -- not enough to change the stubborn math. "Even if Mrs. Clinton won all the delegates in the remaining contests, a practical impossibility, she could not gather the delegates needed to win the nomination," Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times.

"Her negligible payback in convention delegates illustrates why her rival and her party are turning away from her candidacy to begin the fight against Republican John McCain," Jackie Calmes writes in The Wall Street Journal.

"The same demographic dynamics are expected to give the two rivals a split decision in the contests May 20 -- with Sen. Clinton favored in Kentucky and Sen. Obama in Oregon," Calmes writes. "But that will be enough, the Obama campaign expects, to give him a majority of the pledged delegates -- a milestone of sorts that Obama supporters will use to urge support from the remaining uncommitted superdelegates."

Says ABC contributor Matthew Dowd: "It's like a baseball game. Just 'cause you get a lot of hits doesn't mean you score runs. She has left too many men on base in last six months."

New Quinnipiac numbers don't give the Clintons all that much more to point to: Obama leads McCain 47-40 percent, while Clinton is up 46-41.

It's a mistake to look at the West Virginia results solely through the prism of the nominating fight -- and not just since Obama (flag pin now affixed for two straight days) is peering into the general already.

Inside Obamaland, you can blame racist voters, or Clinton legacy, or shrug it all off and point to the math -- or you can face the facts.

"The results highlighted the question of exactly how he will beat McCain in November, a question his campaign did not directly address in a memo released a few hours before polls closed," Politico's Ben Smith writes.

"The results on which the campaign is relying indicate that Obama does somewhat better with educated white independent voters than Clinton, making up for his deficit with working-class white voters. That's a demographic fact that could change the map in November, pushing Obama's campaign north and west, and posing problems for him in the crucial rust belt portions of Ohio and Pennsylvania."

"In a trouble sign for delegate-leader Barack Obama, barely more than half [of West Virginia primary voters] said they would vote for him in November if he is the party's nominee," ABC Polling Director Gary Langer reports.

"Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. Just 32 percent of those voters said they'd support Obama against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where the question's been asked."