The Beginning Of The End

It's 10:30pm or so and we're all going to die of old age before Lake County, Indiana (Gary, IN) cracks open a ballot box.

And in other news, Cuyahoga County, Ohio just notified us that they'll be late tonight as well.

Anyway ... it's now crystal clear that Hillary Clinton's ONLY path to the Democratic nomination is through the absolute destruction of Barack Obama.

Things to look for tomorrow:

• First, will there be a steady stream of superdelegates (10 or more) declaring for Obama? Many have gotten sore butts sitting on that fence during all of this.
• Second, does Clinton's fundraising dry up? She supposedly got a flood of money after the Pennsylvania victory. I don't think eaking out a win in Indiana will cause anything like that to happen -- and if she actually manages to lose!
• Third, the message coming out of the Clinton camp the next 48 hours will likely tell the story whether they'll play things out hoping for a miracle in the DNC rules committee, or whether they'll start setting fire to the village in order to "save it".

As an aside ... what was up with CBS News calling it for Clinton at least 90 minutes early. They will possibly end up being right (but that's not guaranteed at this stage with 85% of the IN vote in, but they crawled out on that limb alone for sooo very long.

And finally. Given that at best Clinton will have won a very narrow and sub expectations victory in Indiana (and may still lose narrowly), can we all now say "buh bye" to Rush Limbaugh's asteroid sized ego in trying to influence the Democratic nomination? His stock is going to be severely hurt by this, I think, with those on the cable shows spectulating on whether he has "influence" or not.

Not.