Hillary Clinton is done. She’s been done for months, but tonight it’s more or less official. Tonight, Obama has not just more delegates, but a majority of the delegates that will be elected directly by the people in the Democratic Party’s nomination process.

Clinton’s campaign continues to blather inanities about how they have won more “electoral votes” (apparently they haven’t really bothered to understand the process) or won the popular vote (as long as you count Michigan, where Obama wasn’t on the ballot, or Florida, where nobody officially campaigned, and as long as you don’t figure for the hundreds of thousands who turned out for Obama in the caucus states) or that if the Democrats had the same rules as the Republicans, why, she’d already be the nominee (well maybe she should be a Republican then!)

The reality is this: The race is over. She lost. And I know she’s a “fighter” and all that crap, but the reality is that every moment she stays in is another moment she hurts the cause of the Democratic Party from here on out.

Up until now, the only reasonable argument (IMO) for staying in the race is that the battle was inspiring more and more people to sign up and vote, but the reality is that the only even halfway justifiable way of saying it’s good is because one of the two candidates has at least a mathematical (if not realistic) chance of winning.

Tonight, Hillary Clinton doesn’t have even that mathematical chance. The only way, the ONLY way, she could win now is to convince enough of the superdelegates to vote for her instead of Obama- and that would essentially mean convincing those superdelegates to go against the stated, demonstrated, voted-upon will of the citizens who consider themselves members of the Democratic Party.

So if the supers want to do that- want to say they know better, to be the elite, to put aside the clear desire of the voters- they can certainly do so. Of course, if they do, they’ll piss off a huge number of Democrats.

I predict this won’t happen. The supers will start falling in line quickly now. I think they won’t bother waiting for the Rules Committee to meet in a week and a half; they’ll declare for Obama sooner, and will use it to bring the party together.

Because if they don’t, the party risks losing, and this nation can’t handle another 4 years of McSame.