It Is All In The Numbers

Today could be the final day for the Clinton campaign. If Hillary does not pull a huge victory in the Pennsylvania primary, there will be a lot of pressure for her to end her presidential campaign. Here's the math.

Today's primary has 158 delegates up for grabs. Hillary must pull at least 65% of those delegates to even have a hope of staying in the race. While current polls are showing both Hillary and Obama almost dead even, there seems to be little hope for her to pull off a large enough Pennsylvania victory, one that would allow her to have a chance to continue.

She is also out of money. Right now her campaign is running in the red, and unless there is a landslide victory, there seems to be little chance that her supporters will contribute any more funds to continue.

But what will she do? She has avoided that question for days now. Will she back away from the spotlight and pledge her support to Barack Obama or will she fight to the end and hope that the super delegates will ultimately decide to have her run in November? It could be any body's guess at this point.

Many democratic leaders are growing restless and wanting this part of the process to end so they can unite in their strategy to defeat McCain in November. There is no denying that McCain defiantly has the upper hand at this point by being able to focus solely on the November's election rather than continue to fight in each state for the primary. If Hillary does loose today, there will be enormous pressure from her party to concede.

She did seem to lean toward supporting Obama at the last debate when asked if she thought Obama could beat McCain, she answered a definite, "yes, yes, yes, " without elaborating, We would have expected her to follow up with something along the lines of, "He could beat McCain, but so could I and I would make the better president...." or at least talk about her experience verses Obama's to deflect the question, but she didn't. She admitted to the party that she believed he could beat McCain. To some democrats that's all that matters - not who the candidate is, but if they can win in November.

Could Hillary let the parties interest overshadow her own and throw her full support behind an Obama run? That looks like the smart thing if she wants to hold on to any political respect that she has left from her party. I'll be watching in the morning, but I wouldn't count her out yet.