The Note: Thinking About Tomorrow

May 27, 2008 -- If these are the waning days of the Clinton era in Democratic politics, there's a certain symmetry to it all. Bill and Hillary Clinton are going out like they came in: Fighting -- vibrant, brash, indignant -- and seeming to thrive on the fact that the world appears aligned against them.

For a quiet end, this sure is noisy: Rounding out your holiday weekend are the RFK comment and its aftermath, Bill Clinton screaming something about a cover-up of polls "they" don't want you to see ("they're" at it again!), and early rumblings in advance of Clinton's last best shot to change the campaign dynamics -- Saturday's to-be-protested DNC meeting in Washington..

It will all be over soon -- we think. "When Hillary Rodham Clinton finally exits the 2008 Democratic presidential race, she will end a decades-long, power-couple streak of unique political energy, savvy ideas, colossal policy flops and raw ambition dressed in pants suits and briefs, not boxers," AP's Calvin Woodward writes. They won't be going far, and yet: "Soon, though, there will be no Clinton running for president or about to. Imagine that."

A week from today, the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee will have already spoken -- and so will all the voters in all the states and jurisdictions on the calendar. Then we count down as the superdelegates either continue their march until Obama's nomination is a mathematical certainty -- or the super-d's wholly and entirely reverse course and hand it to Clinton. (Place your bets.)

Obama is closing in fast on 2,026. "When the primaries end, I think, we'll be where we need to be," Obama strategist David Axelrod tells the New York Daily News' Michael Saul. "We'll be at the number we need to claim the nomination."

Yet: "One week from this evening, what will we be asking?" ABC's Jake Tapper asked on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "We'll be saying what will Sen. Hillary Clinton do -- but the other key question . . . will be, has Barack Obama achieved the magic number to secure the nomination? Because in all likelihood, there will be a new magic number."

Adds ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "Next week this is almost certain to end. . . . Once these contests are done, you're going to see several dozen superdelegates go his way."

It should all be over soon. This political analysis brought to you by former President Jimmy Carter: "I think a lot of the superdelegates will make a decision quite, announced quite rapidly, after the final primary on June 3," he said over the weekend. "I have not yet announced publicly, but I think at that point it will be time for her to give it up."

Or maybe it won't be. This political analysis brought to you by former President Bill Clinton (tossing meat that's going to be hard to get back from inside the cage): "I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running," he said in South Dakota Sunday, per ABC's Sarah Amos. "She will win the general election if you nominate her. They're just trying to make sure you don't."

By the numbers: Obama is now 51 delegates away from 2,026 (the current magic number). He is 202 delegates ahead of Clinton, per ABC's delegate scorecard.

There may well be a new magic number after Saturday -- but still, Clinton, D-N.Y., has to at least start thinking about tomorrow again. "Many Democratic senators said they expect Clinton to work doggedly for Obama this summer and fall, and they agreed that if she does, whatever hard feelings that linger from the primary race will vanish," Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane write in The Washington Post.

"But a bigger question is whether, like Kennedy, she will shelve her presidential ambitions, especially if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wins in November. The 2012 election would coincide with the end of Clinton's second Senate term, effectively turning her into a lame duck. A run for New York governor would hasten Clinton's departure by two years," they write.

Advice from someone who's been here before: Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. "She's got great capacity -- she was a good senator before, and she can be a great senator in the future," Kennedy said (speaking before his recent diagnosis). The question, he said, is "what she does with this experience."

It may not be so easy to return to the day job.

"While she has received millions of votes, stirred thousands of Americans at rallies, made hundreds of appearances and is just scores of delegates short of her goal, defeat would still return her to the Senate as No. 36 out of 49 Democrats," Carl Hulse reported in Monday's New York Times. "But the seniority arithmetic is only the beginning. There is also the personal challenge of returning to a club where more Democratic members, some quite pointedly, favored Senator Barack Obama and spurned her."

Trouble on the home front, too: "Even as she continues her longshot presidential bid, Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a political rift in New York, where black leaders say her standing has dropped due to racially charged comments by her and her husband during the campaign," Peter Nicholas writes in the Los Angeles Times. "African American elected officials and clerics based in New York City say Clinton will need to defuse resentment over the campaign's racial overtones if she returns to New York as U.S. senator."

Clinton doesn't seem ready to go home -- not yet. She lays out her case in an extraordinary New York Daily News column Sunday: "I am running because I still believe I can win on the merits," she writes. "I am not unaware of the challenges or the odds of my securing the nomination -- but this race remains extraordinarily close, and hundreds of thousands of people in upcoming primaries are still waiting to vote. As I have said so many times over the course of this primary, if Sen. Obama wins the nomination, I will support him and work my heart out for him against John McCain. But that has not happened yet."

"She claims she is actually uniting the party by giving all voters a chance to play a part in the process of choosing the Democratic Party's presidential candidate," ABC's John Hendren reports.

But there's a flipside to her perseverance -- as Clinton's chances dwindle. "Clinton has always claimed to be the cold-eyed realist in the race, and at one point maybe she was," Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post column. "Increasingly, though, her words and actions reflect the kind of thinking that animates myths and fairy tales: Maybe a sudden and powerful storm will scatter my enemy's ships. Maybe a strapping woodsman will come along and save the day."

Don't expect too much at Saturday's Rules & Bylaws Committee meeting. "The argument is likely to fall of its own weight, because it is a mountain of wishful thinking," Michael Tackett writes for the Chicago Tribune. "The DNC already decided that Florida and Michigan should be penalized for trying to leapfrog the primary calendar. If the party is to stand for anything, it will uphold its rules."