Hillary loses even if she wins

At Angles, a watering hole in Adams Morgan, a hip neighbourhood in Washington, patronised predominantly by writers, journalists and political activists, the crowd erupted in cheers as the primary returns from Wisconsin, on the night of March 19, appeared on the TV screens: Barack Obama swept to a double-digit victory, wresting the state from Hillary Clinton, with nine per cent of the vote, ironically, coming from Republicans.

It was his ninth straight victory. The tenth came the following day in Hawaii.

What is left for Hillary's campaign is the epic contest in Texas and Ohio three days from now, on March 4. The chances of the senator from New York winning those two states range from slim to non-existent.

In fact, even if she wins she loses, for she has to win by a large majority in both states to keep up with Obama in pledged delegates and then go to Pennsylvania April 22 - and that is not going to happen.

Obama is on a roll, unstoppable and unbeatable as his party's nominee for president of the United States. I kid you not, the man is a phenomenon, and he is as good as people who have been voting for him think he is.

Pundits in the national press have already written Hillary off. Consider what Robert D. Novak, the veteran syndicated columnist, wrote last Monday: "Even before Senator Barack Obama won his ninth straight contest against Sen Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, 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 that the sooner she leaves the race, the more it will improve the party's chances of defeating Sen John McCain in November?"

Richard Cohn in the Washington Post wrote the following day: "There is discussion in the Hillary Clinton Camp. Top aides have been in arguments, shouting back and forth about differences in strategy. Should Clinton come on strong? Should she go negative? Should she be upbeat and positive? Here's my answer: Stop campaigning".

And, as if to sum it up, Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist wrote last last Saturday: "[Hillary Clinton], the candidate who tried to present herself as inevitable has been out-manoeuvred nearly every step of the way by a prodigy with a warm and brilliant smile who still seems as energetic as an athlete doing callisthenics before a big game".

It was a mere two months ago when Hillary was considered the invincible front-runner and inevitable winner, with Obama dismissed by her campaign operatives as a flash-in-the-pan, a black candidate with little experience, and little appeal to the white working class. It turns out that he has not just attracted those very voters, but young, educated, middle class voters as well.

Key primaries

So the end for Hillary draws nigh as the returns of the primaries in Ohio and Texas come in three days hence, where the polls show that Obama has cut her lead in the former from 20 points to 10 and is neck and neck with her in the latter.

Those two states are clearly Hillary's last stand. Even her husband and most ardent, albeit bungling, campaigner, former president Bill Clinton, has put himself on record as saying that, effectively, if his wife loses those two states, it's curtains for the lady.

The much trumpeted Hillary constituency of Latinos in Texas and the white working class in Ohio are deserting her in droves.

In San Antonio recently, after an Obama speech directed at that very constituency, a Hispanic woman marvelled, according to a story in the current issue of the Economist: "He's got words that can reach every corner of the world, and the world is waiting for him", and 10 days ago the powerful Teamsters union endorsed him as did the equally powerful Service Employees International Union.

The long and short of it is that Hillary Clinton, the senator from New York, the former First Lady and the Democratic candidate with the strained smile and that sense of entitlement she carries around her, has gotten hopelessly outclassed by Barack Obama, a former community organiser, a civil rights attorney and a young man who is doing better on the stump than John F. Kennedy had done in his time.

My friend Patrick O'Donnell, a photojournalist who had worked in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and more recently in Iraq, put it this way: "Most Americans believe, as I do, that of the two Democratic candidates likely to bring a new progressive majority, it's Obama who will be the more realistic agent of that change".

Another friend, Gunnar Larson, a lifelong Democrat and a cynical Chicago native, provided a different, and perhaps amusing wrap by resorting to a boxing metaphor: "Will the referee please stop the fight before Hillary is made to kiss canvas?". So what happens three days from now when Hillary gives a party in Houston and no one comes?

Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington D.C.