I'm guessing whether you're an Obama supporter or an HRC fan by thursday the fact she won by 9.7 or 10.1 really, really won't matter.

peter:

Stop being obtuse.  From a matter of perspective/spin, it DOES matter if it's 9 or 10.  Whether it should matter is something else entirely.

At this point, who f'ing cares. This is one giant waste of time for all of us. I haven't felt this spent on politics since October 2004. Who cares?

Noam,

Chris Matthews says you're wrong about the Rendell effect.  I take that to mean that you are dead-on.

Neil

Agreed with ralphnelle, let's close down the Stump blog and quit inciting Hillary supporters and those Democrats that think the race should go on till 'there's a clear winner'.

I did some math. Even if Hillary splits supers from here on out -- which is already ridiculous -- she'd have to win 68% of the pledged delegates. She's won only one state -- Arkansas -- with 68%. She's toast. GET THE F*** OUT ALREADY!!!!

As per my comments about shutting down the Stump, I was speaking figuratively.  Let's not give the groups I've mentioned any more rationale to 'fight the odds', being careful in how the 'she needs to quit' meme is created.  The Stump is a great read and we've still got a general election to go.  Plus, the Stump makes an impact, but as the editors have explained, the impact is reaches the masses via larger broadcast outlets (and of course dedicated TNR readers!); so it's not like it's changing the numbers instantaneously.

Neil,

Thanks for the laugh. Matthews is a political chameleon, the Zelig of MSNBC. His only goal is to puff up the person he's talking to. No principle, no critical thinking, at least not while he's on air prepping for his senate run. Evidently, "Friends of Chris" is a much higher priority than serious analysis.

Sometimes I wonder whether this entire process, this unending trip to the dentist, is some maniacal trick being played by a malicious god to see how much sophistry we can tolerate before going barking mad. Now all we need is for Cohn or Judis to post a windy non-sequitur about a loss to Hillary = a loss to McCain in the general, and we'll be par for the course.

The Panglossian "high" that had gripped this site seems to have evaporated just a tad.  The kool-aid wearing off?

Scheiber blames it all now on the "The "Rendell EFfect". Which "Rendell Effect"? Is this just another way to tell us that crow tastes awful after yet another one of your pre-election pro-obama "analyses" is repudiated?

My mistake, I miscalculated. She needs ton 76%.

I doubt it's the Rendell effect, so much as the difference between Rendell and Obama. Rendell's politics, remember, were eminently Clintonian. The reason he was so beloved in the Philly suburbs parallels in miniature the reason Clinton was successful nationwide: Rendell seemed to urbanophobic (not a real word) suburb-dwellers to be a Democrat not in thrall to liberal interest groups. Most famously, he washed the floor of City Hall himself, rather than concede to the public employees' union's demands.

So, while the basic demographics of the Obama-Clinton race obviously make Obama the Rendell of this comparison (supported by educated, affluent metropolitans), it's important to note the difference among these metropolitans. Philly suburbanites are not really liberals. In fact, they're often referred to as archetypical of the socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative voters who became Democrats in the 1990s, precisely because Clinton made the Democratic Party safe for them, just as the New Right drove them from the GOP. It's probably a reasonable guess that the Bush years have turned a lot of these Clinton moderates into out-and-out liberals (call it the Dean-Krugman Process), but it's worth remembering why they're Democrats in the first place. My guess is that the better part of them are still basically middle-to-upper class, disproportionately Jewish, somewhat urbanophobic, and kind of square. We might do as well to call them Arlen Specter Democrats.

The demographic data on Obama's support from the educated and the affluent strikes me as a function largely of his support among cosmopolitan and urban Democrats. I'm sure his numbers among Democrats in Manhattan were way better than among Democrats in, say, Nassau County. This is the same story.

I see Judis *predictably* (see above) served up another dose of the Wolfson non-sequitur: Obama's weaknesses against Hillary = future weaknesses against McCain. No evidence, just truthiness. He can just feel it.

How many times is TNR going to publish this garbage? Frankly, I'm really sick of paying for it.

Wow Ralph, TNR coverage is running 95% pro Obama to 5% pro Clinton. What are you going to do when President Obama runs up against his first negative press over a policy issue?

peter,

I don't mind serious arguments against Obama, just as I don't mind serious arguments against Clinton. The problem with Cohn and Judis is that they keep repeating a bullshit argument that would earn them a failing grade in any respectable critical thinking class for college freshmen. Bring it. Just make it real.