…is, they’ve been telling us since March 4, how the race for the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion was going to end. And sure enough, the whim­per­ing has begun in earnest. How do we know? Ben Smith at Politico is going on vacation.

If that doesn’t con­vince you, con­sider how quickly Adam Nagourney’s arti­cle in yesterday’s New York Times has become the cor­ner­stone of the new con­ven­tional wisdom about the race. Nagour­ney wrote that Hillary Clinton’s bid for the nom­i­na­tion “has seemed some­thing of a long shot since her defeats in February.” But, he said, “that shot seems to have grown a little longer” this week, after it became clear that Florida and Michi­gan would not have do-​over elec­tions and clear as well that Jere­miah Wright was not going to be the candidacy-​destroying dis­as­ter that Clin­ton needed him to be.

Later yes­ter­day, Christo­pher Beam at Slate carved the flabby qual­i­fi­ca­tions away from the core of Nagourney’s argu­ment and stated the case against Clin­ton in much more stark language:

Clin­ton can win only by over­turn­ing Obama’s pledged del­e­gate lead—a truism that still has not gotten the trac­tion it deserves. Omi­nous warn­ings about 1968-like riots aside, the prospect that Clin­ton would accept the nom­i­na­tion over the head of the people is fun­da­men­tally at odds with every­thing the party represents…. Hillary’s path to the nom­i­na­tion is not “narrow.” It’s barricaded.

Now this morn­ing, Jim Van­de­hei and Mike Allen at Politico follow up with their own death cer­tifi­cate, whose lede reads: “One big fact has largely been lost in the recent cov­er­age of the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial race: Hillary Rodham Clin­ton has vir­tu­ally no chance of winning.” And Mark Halperin adds his 14-point pile-​on over at Time, which includes this thought: “She can’t win the nom­i­na­tion with­out a bloody con­ven­tion battle — after which, even if she won, his­tory and many Democ­rats would cast her as a villain.”

What to make of it all?

Given that Barack Obama started this week back on his heels after the media lynch­ing* of Jere­miah Wright, you’d have to say this was a hell of a turn­around. And a person could be for­given for won­der­ing what caused that turn­around, espe­cially since the week was notice­ably free of the ordi­nary means by which we mark progress in the nom­i­na­tion horse race—namely, elections.

It would be nice to say that Obama’s speech on Tues­day caused the shift in media momen­tum. But good as that speech was for all kinds of rea­sons, in the imme­di­ate con­text of the nom­i­na­tion fight I sus­pect that it only one real effect: to con­vince the chat­ter­ing classes, media and polit­i­cal alike, that his can­di­dacy was not going to founder on the shoals of Trin­ity United Church of Christ. The best evi­dence of this is Chris Wallace’s appear­ance on FOX this morn­ing (which was stun­ning not only because it sug­gested that Wal­lace does indeed have a con­science but also that he actu­ally took the argu­ments of Obama’s Tues­day speech to heart).

I think it fair to say, how­ever, that it was the fail­ure of revote pro­pos­als in Michi­gan and Florida, and not the speech, that were really the final nails in the Clin­ton can­di­dacy. (Which, to follow that metaphor out to its excru­ci­at­ing end, would make Bill Richardson’s endorse­ment of Obama today the first clod of dirt to begin the actual process of burial.)

I do think that this chain of events—the neu­tral­iza­tion of the Wright threat, the end of the Florida and Michi­gan revotes, and Nagourney’s articles—adequately explain the fact that we’re sud­denly read­ing so much about the end of Clin­ton. And yet they still seem too slight, espe­cially since as recently as three days ago people were still talk­ing as if we had a com­pet­i­tive race.

The elec­toral facts now are not sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent than they were a month ago. But I think the real ques­tion to ask our­selves is not why the race is ending now, in the absence of any deci­sive events (no big elec­tion wins, no bloc superdel­e­gate announce­ments), but why the nom­i­na­tion fight has gone on even this long.

Polit­i­cal reporters knew it was a very long shot, but for the last month they’ve indulged the Clin­ton camp’s asser­tion that events could con­spire to get her the nom­i­na­tion. First, she would have to get big wins in Florida, Michi­gan, and Penn­syl­va­nia, which would give her a lead in the so-​called pop­u­lar vote. Second, this lead would have to be enough to con­vince superdel­e­gates to defect en masse to Clinton’s side, per­haps assisted by con­tin­ued fall­out from the Wright flap or some other Obama scan­dal. Unlikely, every­one admit­ted, but not com­pletely out of the range of possibility.

Politico’s Van­de­hei and Allen sug­gest some good rea­sons why the media were so will­ing to keep up the fic­tion of a com­pet­i­tive race:

One reason is fear of embar­rass­ment. In its zeal to avoid pre­dic­tive report­ing of the sort that embar­rassed jour­nal­ists in New Hamp­shire, the media—including Politico—have tended to avoid zero­ing in on the tough math Clin­ton faces…. There are other forces also work­ing to pre­serve the notion of a con­test that is still up for grabs. One impor­tant, if sub­lim­i­nal, reason is self-​interest. Reporters and edi­tors love a close race—it’s more fun and it’s good for busi­ness. The media are also enam­ored of the almost mys­ti­cal abil­ity of the Clin­tons to work their way out of tight jams, as they have done for 16 years at the national level…. It’s also hard to over­state the role the tal­ented Clin­ton camp plays in shap­ing the cam­paign nar­ra­tive, first by subtly low­er­ing the bar for the per­for­mance nec­es­sary to remain in the race, and then by keep­ing the focus on Obama’s rela­tion­ships with a polit­i­cal fixer and a con­tro­ver­sial pastor in Illinois.

Another reason, which Van­de­hei and Allen don’t men­tion, is the fit of media self-​flagellation that took place in the after­math of the Feb. 24 Sat­ur­day Night Live skit making fun of the respec­tive treat­ment of Clin­ton and Obama. The anti-anti-Clinton back­lash couldn’t have come at a more oppor­tune time for Hillary, since it drew a week of sym­pa­thetic cov­er­age in advance of the March 4 pri­maries. (Obama’s Feb­ru­ary suc­cesses may have also played a part in delay­ing his ulti­mate vic­tory: for a few days there it was look­ing like he might be able to win Ohio, even though he’d been polling 20 points below Clin­ton just a three weeks ear­lier. When he didn’t win, some reporters, heartily encour­aged by the Clin­ton cam­paign, pro­nounced the bloom to be offi­cially off the rose.)

The hope now is that other superdel­e­gates will follow quickly in Richardson’s steps and announce their sup­port for Obama. I don’t imag­ine any­thing else would con­vince Hillary to drop out. And even that may not be enough: word from Slate’s Beam is that Clinton’s camp is now claim­ing that “Obama’s attempt to wrap up the nom­i­na­tion before Penn­syl­va­nia is tan­ta­mount to dis­en­fran­chis­ing the remain­ing states.” Yes it’s ridicu­lous, but it speaks to just how out of touch the upper ech­e­lon of the Clin­ton cam­paign is with real­ity. Hillary Clin­ton or Mark Penn or Howard Wolf­son may believe in their heart of hearts that any­thing but a Clin­ton nom­i­na­tion is an affront to democ­racy, civil­ity, and good taste, but the rest of us don’t have to agree. It’s time to move on.

++++++++

NOTES:

* I use the word under advisement.