One thing many people haven’t noticed about Hillary Clinton’s 55 percent to 45 percent victory over Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary is that it put her ahead of Obama in the popular vote. Her 214,000-vote margin in the Keystone State means that she has won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama.

If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes.

Moreover, she may be able to maintain that lead, despite an expected Obama victory in North Carolina on May 6, by rolling up big popular vote margins in West Virginia on May 13, Kentucky on May 20 and Puerto Rico on June 1. So it’s likely that Clinton will be able to argue that undecided super-delegates should heed the will of the people.

Democratic superdelegates will have to think about the long months of summer ahead.  The truth is that Senator Obama would be the most left-wing main party presidential nominee in history.  He is far outside the mainstream, and large crowds in stadiums don't translate into huge vote margins in general elections.  The young love him, yes, but the old are really going to trust John McCain to protect them.  The superdelegates are going to be upset that Operation Chaos revived Hillary, and if she comebacks, she'll always be Rush's nominee, but he just played the role of Burgess Meredith/Mickey Goldmill in Rocky.  (Bill will be Paulie -- a fine analogy.)  Hillary will have shown the toughness to do what it took to win.

(Moderator's note: Hewitt called it early in the day Tuesday.)Joel likes: The Democratic race will continue 

It seems clear that this year’s establishment candidate, Hilary Clinton, will not have organized labor rush to her rescue. Part of this may be political payback for her husband’s presidency. After aggressively supporting Bill Clinton twice, many labor unions felt that his administration either ignored them or endorsed legislation (such as NAFTA) that was inimical to union interests.

But there are more fundamental issues that explain labor’s shift. For starters, the leaders of today’s unions are different from those of yesteryear in personality and ideology. Consider Andy Stern, the charismatic president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and arguably the most important labor leader in America. Stern didn’t get his start in the union movement working at a steel mill; instead, he attended the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1960s and first joined the SEIU as a social worker. Unlike Meany or Kirkland, Stern is unabashedly liberal on nearly every policy issue. And when Stern was unhappy with the leadership of the AFL-CIO, he spurned the old labor line about “solidarity,” withdrew the SEIU from the AFL-CIO, recruited like-minded unions to do the same, and formed an entirely new labor federation, dubbed Change to Win.

What to do? What to do? The party bosses are slumped in their seats, staring blankly into space, or doing job searches on their Blackberries. All is gloom and despondency.

Then … A fanfare of trumpets! A shaft of light! Into the hall rides a man on a white stallion! Stirred from their lethargy, the delegates begin rising from their seats. They start cheering and applauding. The rider reaches the podium, dismounts, and strides to the dais. The applause is deafening now. Cheers ring round the hall! Women are weeping; men are hugging each other.

Broad-shouldered and confident, his sternocleidomastoid muscle flexing and rippling, the Rescuer sweeps his powerful gaze around the hall. A hush falls. He begins to speak. As he speaks, the same though settles on every listener simultaneously: This is the one. He has always been the one. What fools we have been!

Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Don’t, in fact, think it isn’t going to happen. The Democratic party has two lame candidates, without a dime’s worth of executive experience between them.

Surely, if she wins every state until the end of the primaries, that will suggest Obama has weakened wildly and will change the dynamic of the discussion in Democratic circles going into the summer. It’s a tall order, very tall, to be sure. But one thing is certain: Her path to the nomination actually looks better this week than it did last week, owing to Obama’s troubles. And yet the pieces all appear at once to say she’s through. Why try to puncture a hole in Hillary’s balloon now? It is very nearly impossible not to think that, at least unconsciously, the pieces are an effort to limit the damage to Barack Obama among the undecided superdelegates and the like by reminding them of the trouble Hillary is in.