Newstradamus

Tuesday night was exciting for those of us on the West Coast who were able to stay up and watch the exciting finale to the Indiana Presidential Primary, where Barack Obama seemed to be close to catching and defeating Hillary Clinton, many hours after Hillary had declared victory.

I was switching back and forth between MSNBC, which had the better commentary, and CNN, where John King punched his fingers at a giant computer screen to call up data graphics in an instant.

CNN also had duelling interviews with the white, pro-Clinton mayor of Hammond, Ind., and the pro-Obama mayor of Gary. Both are from Lake County, but Hammond had its results in early, and the lack of Gary's results were holding up the final decision.

The Gary mayor kept trying to explain to Wolf Blitzer why the votes were late as the Hammond mayor hinted at election fraud in Gary. Just when Wolf seemed ready to scream in frustration, the last big chunk of returns popped on the screen, and Hillary was declared the winner by a whisker.

Today, all the pundits are trying to read Hillary Clinton's mind. Pretty much all of them agree she has no path to victory, barring the unspeakable, an assassination. Yet she said today she'll be in it until the nominee is selected, which is being interpreted as meaning the first ballot vote at the convention.

Since there is such a downside to that as far as her political future is concerned, it can only be ego and/or a desire to be the vice presidential candidate. After such a nasty campaign on her part, it's hard to see a scenario where she would be of any help to the Democratic ticket, or why Obama would want her as his No. 2. After all, he can answer his own phone at 3 a.m.

In fact, primary postmortems may show that the Clintons have done irreparable harm to their reputations and their legacy by being willing to do and say almost anything to damage their Democratic opponent in the eyes of voters. My guess that the superdelegates will start going over to Obama in droves, and he may top the required number of delegates before the last primary. I can't see the superdelegates hanging on until the convention before choosing, even if Hillary does.