Jack Kelly Sunday

In a nutshell, Jack Kelly thinks that Robert Novak and Jonathan Alter are wrong when each wrote this week that Senator Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race.

Here's Novak:

Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination, and the sooner she leaves the race, the more it will improve chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?

In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin, claiming a ''comeback'' that would propel her to narrow victories in Texas and Ohio on March 4. That still would not cut her a path to the nomination. Telling her then to end her candidacy and avoid a bloody battle stretching to the party's Denver national convention might not be achievable.

After that there's not much factual data, just a odd comparison to Senator Barry Goldwater putting a "bell" Nixon's "cat" (if I have the metaphor right) and telling him he'd lost the support of the Republican party.

Jonathan Alter, on the other hand, has some numbers:

Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn't. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That's how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.

The much-ballyhooed race for superdelegates is now nearly irrelevant. Some will be needed in Denver to put Obama over the top, just as Walter Mondale had to round up a couple dozen in 1984. But these party leaders won't determine the result. At the Austin, Texas, debate last week, Hillary agreed that the process would "sort itself out" so that the will of the people would not be reversed by superdelegates. Obama has a commanding 159 lead in pledged delegates and a lead of 925,000 in the popular vote (excluding Michigan and Florida, where neither campaigned). Closing that gap would require Hillary to win all the remaining contests by crushing margins. Any takers on her chances of doing so in, say, Mississippi and North Carolina, where African-Americans play a big role?

Jack's point seems to be that Senator Clinton should should and wait and see what the world looks like on Wednesday:

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter have written columns this week urging Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to drop out of the Democratic race for president now, before the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

This is ridiculous. If Sen. Clinton loses in Ohio or Texas, and especially if she loses in both, the biblical "Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin" (counted and counted, weighed and divided) not only will be scribbled on the wall of her campaign headquarters, it'll be flashing in neon lights from the Goodyear blimp. March 4 is Tuesday. We can wait until then to see what the Moving Finger writes. Hillary Clinton certainly will.

By the way, for those of you not well-versed in the "hand writing on the wall" reference, it's Daniel 5:1-31. I'm guessing Jack was writing metaphorically and doesn't think Senator Clinton will share the same fate as King Belshazzar. For as we see in Daniel 5:30:

In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean King was slain.

Ouch.

Not much else to say so let's look at the numbers. According to CNN, an estimated 2,662 delegates have been awarded out of the total 4,049 - 1,369 to Senator Obama and 1,267 to Senator Clinton (26 went to John Edwards). As each needs 2,025 to win the nomination, Senator Obama needs about 656 and Senator Clinton about 758.

The next round of primaries (Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont) offer up a total of 370 delegates.

After that, there are only 12 more primariesfor the Democratic nomination - the largest being Pennsylvania's on April 22.

Two things I did find interesting in Jack's column. I always enjoy when a conservative writer finds it in his (or her) heart to give advice to a Democratic candidate - as if that writer is truly concerned about that candidate's chances. If that's the precedent, let me offer up some adivce to Senator McCain: Come clean with all your political relationships with all your lobbyists - including those on your campaign staff. For a "straight-talking maverick" honesty and transparency should be the best policy. Oh, yea and denounce the anti-Catholic, anti-gay bigot who just endorsed you.

Then there's the title of the column. Which so much crap flying around about Senator Clinton and gender, why would anyone title such a newspaper column ""Clinton Should Stick It Out"?

That, my friends, takes balls.