Clinton keeps fighting

It's over. It's over, right? Don't tell her it's over:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she wasn't ceding Oregon — or the nomination — to opponent Barack Obama, who is heavily favored to collect another victory here next week as he comes closer to winning the Democratic nomination.
"I've been declared dead so many times, and luckily it's been premature, and I'm hoping it stays premature," Clinton said. "If I'd listened to people a month ago, three weeks ago, last week, you wouldn't be here trying to make up your minds about who you're going to vote for," she added.

She said that during an hour-long televised town hall event that he had all to herself because Obama refused to debate her. Think she's ready to quit? Uh-uh:

Proving she has no plans to leave the race just yet, Hillary Rodham Clinton is airing new messages in Kentucky and Oregon.

Here's an Oregon ad where she takes dead aim at the pundits who've been counting her out for the past two months:



The polls show she'll win by a landslide in Kentucky, while Obama's got a 15-point lead in Oregon. But after Hillary got a full hour of free TV in Oregon, surely it will be closer than that.

After Tuesday, there will be two weeks left until the last primaries June 3 in South Dakota and Montana. Only by getting additional superdelegates in his column could Obama clinch by then if 2,025 is the magic number. And Hillary keeps saying the number is 2,209, or else voters in Michigan and Florida will have been "disenfranchised."

Experts have been saying for two months that Hillary can't win, and who am I to argue with experts? But if she can't win, she doesn't seem to know it. She'll fight it out to the bitter end. Obama evidently thinks he's got the nomination so safely locked up he can ignore Oregon, let her have a whole hour of free TV and focus his attention on John McCain. That's an extraordinary level of confidence, one that ought to worry Obama's supporters.

UPDATE: I just looked at the RCP delegate count, and noticed how Hillary has nibbled away at Obama's pledged delegate lead since Pennsylvania (where she was net +12). Guam was a 2-2 tie, and Obama gained a net +13 from the May 6 primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, but then Hillary netted +12 in West Virginia.

So the pledged delegate gap has narrowed by 11 since April 22, and Obama's cumulative margin is now 153. There are 103 delegates at stake Tuesday. If Hillary gets the Kentucky landslide predicted by the polls, and Obama underperforms in Oregon, the gap should narrow further. Given that a Kentucky win would reinforce her swing-state "electability" argument, Clinton could go into the last two weeks with a strong argument why superdelegates (227 of whom have not yet declared for either candidate) should not jump too quickly to her opponent.

If between now and June 3 there were any serious scandal or gaffe on Obama's part . . . ah, but what am I saying? It's over. The experts told us so.

UPDATE II: The latest ARG poll for Oregon has it at Obama 50, Hillary 45. Of course, it's a mail-in primary and voting's been going on for a couple of weeks already, so it's hard to poll. But if Hillary holds Obama to a single-digit margin in Oregon and wins big in Kentucky, it will be interesting to hear what the pundits are saying on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Obama is "whining for votes."