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  • The Week on the Hill

The morning after Hillary Rodham Clinton eked out a victory in Indiana's Democratic presidential primary, one of her K Street supporters was up on Capitol Hill. After several conversations with Democratic lawmakers, he assessed his candidate's prospects.

"I think she gave it a good run, and it's done. Time to go," said the lobbyist, who requested anonymity in order to be candid. "I think she and the people around her are pretty smart, and they'll figure it out pretty quickly."

How long does he give Clinton? "A week," said the lobbyist, who is familiar with pressures on a flagging presidential campaign. "The superdelegates will give her a reasonable amount of time to figure it out," he said empathetically. "They'll give her some breathing space. And if she doesn't get out, people will start to move to [Barack] Obama in a fairly dramatic fashion."

As the lobbyist was taking the temperature of members of Congress, some of Clinton's Senate colleagues who are backing Obama were careful not to push her too hard during a conference call with reporters. The timing of Clinton's withdrawal is "her decision for her to make on her terms when she thinks is appropriate," said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. "This is truly her decision to make," echoed Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. "As long as this is resolved by June, I think we will be in a very good position" for the fall campaign.

The Obama campaign clearly believes that the handwriting is on the wall for Clinton. Manager David Plouffe said during the conference call that Obama's total delegate advantage over the New Yorker has risen to 172, "the largest it's been in the whole campaign," because his victory in the North Carolina primary more than offset Clinton's success in Indiana. With his usual clinical precision, Plouffe said that the campaign is a mere 33 delegates away from securing an absolute majority of the convention's pledged delegates. "That will happen on May 20," when Democratic primaries are held in Kentucky and Obama-friendly Oregon, Plouffe predicted.

At that point, the argument that superdelegates should follow the will of the Democratic electorate would probably have even greater resonance, although many of Obama's supporters don't want to wait. "It's now time for the superdelegates to begin to bring this process to a close and announce their preferences," said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who was also on the conference call.

Many Democrats, including some Clinton supporters, seemed relieved that she did not win both May 6 primaries because that would have given new life to an effort they now view as futile even though there are six primaries to come--in West Virginia on Tuesday, in Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, in Puerto Rico on June 1, and in Montana and South Dakota on June 3.

Democratic leaders who are fearful that the protracted struggle between Clinton and Obama diminishes their party's chances of winning back the White House were not reassured by the exit polls indicating that many Clinton supporters are reluctant to embrace Obama. In North Carolina, only 47 percent of Clinton voters said they would support Obama over presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain. Of the remainder, a whopping 35 percent of her voters said they would back McCain, and 12 percent said they would not vote.

The story was much the same in Indiana, where only 49 percent of Clinton voters said they would support Obama if he's the nominee; 31 percent said they would vote for McCain, and 16 percent said they would sit out the race.

Conversely, in North Carolina more than 70 percent of Obama's voters were prepared to back Clinton in the general election. And in Indiana, 60 percent indicated they would support Clinton over McCain.

With emotions running high, Democratic voters could be exaggerating how likely they are to stray--or stay home--on November 4, but the eventual nominee will clearly need time to bind the party's self-inflicted wounds. Yet Clinton showed no inclination to throw in the towel as she headed off to a campaign appearance in Shepherdstown, W.Va., on Wednesday even though she had not arrived back in Washington, D.C., until after 3 a.m.

"You've got to be on the playing field to win," remarked Clinton's campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe. "We've got a lot of campaigning to do."

He dismissed reports that Clinton's campaign is struggling to stay afloat financially and said that April had been its second-best fundraising month, even excluding the more than $6 million that the candidate lent to her effort. Noting that the remaining primaries are in states with relatively inexpensive media markets, McAuliffe said, "From a cash-flow management perspective, these are all very manageable."

Determined to fight on, he declared: "We are all in until June 3."

To keep her campaign alive, McAuliffe said, Clinton needs "big wins" in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. He conceded that strong showings are also necessary in Oregon and Montana.

But to cut into Obama's delegate lead significantly, Clinton would have to get the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations seated even though the timing of their primaries broke party rules. The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee will meet on May 31 in an effort to resolve that controversy.

Clinton would pick up 38 pledged delegates from Florida and 18 from Michigan if the delegations were fully restored. And Clinton herself is saying that it will take 2,210 delegates to be nominated--half of the total if Florida (211 delegates) and Michigan (155 delegates) are somehow made whole.

The Obama camp argues that such comments are mere wishful thinking. "What we're seeing here is another creative attempt to create a new metric to argue that there is some [Clinton] path to the nomination here," Plouffe said. "It's just not going to happen that Michigan and Florida are going to be used in some way to overturn the results of these other primaries and caucuses."

Ultimately, that could be up to the party's national convention in Denver at the end of August to decide. But Obama's supporters predict that any effort to extend the nominating contest to the convention floor with a credentials challenge to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations would prompt superdelegates to anoint him.

"I think part of their responsibility is to prevent that kind of confrontation," Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, an Obama supporter, told reporters.

The protracted contest is not likely to come to that, though. Not long after the conference call on Wednesday, Obama's campaign released the names of three more superdelegates who had endorsed him: North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek, North Carolina DNC member Jeanette Council, and California DNC member Inola Henry.

"What you'll continue to see is slow movement toward Obama," said the Clinton supporter from K Street who is ready for her to concede. "I don't think it will be a rush to him, but he will continue to build his lead. And it becomes clearer and clearer that there's no way to overcome it."