It is no longer whether but when Senator Hillary Clinton might be persuaded to withdraw from the race for the Democratic nomination. It could come as early as this week when she meets the super delegates to the Democratic convention who could yet, in theory, help her secure the nomination.

To get the few remaining uncommitted super delegates to tilt the scales against Senator Barack Obama, Clinton needed to decisively change the political game in Tuesday’s primaries. Her loss by a huge margin in North Carolina and a narrow victory in Indiana have all but knocked out Clinton’s political prospects.

It is virtually impossible for Clinton to overturn Obama’s current lead in popular vote and the delegate count in the few remaining primaries. Clinton had hoped that a fluent victory in Indiana and a close contest in North Carolina would reinforce her current argument that Obama is unelectable in the November general elections because he is unable to ‘close the sale’ with the all-important white working class vote.

Although Clinton won nearly 61 per cent of the white Democrats in North Carolina and nearly 65 per cent in Indiana, she could not generate the broader surge necessary to stop Obama. Nearly 90 per cent of the African American voters and a significant portion of the white middle classes stayed with Obama in North Carolina and Indiana.

In the last few weeks, Clinton seemed energised by a new sense of purposefulness and the visible capacity to connect with ordinary people. As the post-mortems might conclude, she found her voice a little too late.

... contd.