I enjoyed Markos' piece about this at http://www.dailykos.com/... but there's an important point to be made, which I made at http://www.danablankenhorn.com/...
I'm just going to republish a few lines here. You can use the link for the rest.
A Grieving Process
While the media natters about how nasty this is getting, Clinton supporters themselves reveal a deeper truth.
Whether it's in their anger at being outnumbered, or their attempts to bargain away from the inevitable, whether it's a denial of their own reality or self-flagellating depression, what becomes obvious is we're seeing a grieving process at work.
Usually the candidate goes through this process for us, and delivers the campaign's death blow in a seppuku-like speech. The Edwards campaign went like that. One day you're out there, and the next you're not – it's a car crash way to go.
snip
I see what's happening with the Clinton people because I know from grieving. The arithmetic of a nomination fight is inevitable. There's a cancer eating away at the prospective Hillary Clinton Presidency. Numbers. She "won" Ohio and Texas, but her gains from that were wiped out by Wyoming and Mississippi. Now the drift toward Obama has renewed itself.
The process still has a ways to go, but the good news is Obama himself seems to sense what's going on.
That's why he continues to insist on keeping a velvet glove on, even while piling the iron fist into Clinton's arguments. He's like a fighter who has beaten their opponent and is looking to the doctor or the ref to stop it before someone gets killed, while the opponent goes gamely on searching for a haymaker that will turn things around.
It won't happen. Barring a bullet, or a hooker, or something equally calamitous, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. There is nothing she, nor her supporters, can do to stop it. That's the way the system works. The media is acting like this is a live contest only because they're the crowd at the fight – they want to see blood, not the ref waving his hands and hugging the loser.