Although Hillary Rodham Clinton gives no indication whatsoever that she’s folding her candidacy, she’s increasingly banking on those pesky, outlawed, primaries held in Florida and Michigan to put her over the top that her campaign aides have tried to identify.

The status of those delegates will be decided Saturday by the Democratic National Committee’s committee on rules and bylaws, a meeting where Clinton supporters have vowed to show up in force. But on Tuesday, she suffered a setback when party lawyers circulated an advisory memo that says the committee can only seat half the states’ delegates — too few to give her enough to surmount Barack Obama’s still-growing lead.

Of course, anything can happen Saturday, but Clinton has pulled out the rhetorical stops in a letter she sent to undeclared superdelegates (who hold her fate in their hands), trying to make her case once and for all:

Dear ___________,
The stakes in this election are so high: with two wars abroad, our economy in crisis here at home, and so many families struggling across America, the need for new leadership has never been greater.

At this point, we do not yet have a nominee – and when the last votes are cast on June 3, neither Senator Obama nor I will have secured the nomination. It will be up to automatic delegates like you to help choose our party’s nominee, and I would like to tell you why I believe I am the stronger candidate against Senator McCain and would be the best President and Commander in Chief.

Voters in every state have made it clear that they want to be heard and counted as part of this historic race. And as we reach the end of the primary season, more than 17 million people have supported me in my effort to become the Democratic nominee – more people than have ever voted for a potential nominee in the history of our party. In the past two weeks alone, record numbers of voters participated in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries. And with 40 and 35 point margins of victory, it is clear that even when voters are repeatedly told this race is over, they’re not giving up on me – and I am not giving up on them either.

After seven years of feeling invisible to the Bush administration, Americans are seeking a President who is strong, experienced, and ready to take on our toughest challenges, from serving as Commander in Chief and ending the war in Iraq to turning our economy around. They want a President who shares their core beliefs about our country and its future and “gets” what they go through every day to care for their families, pay the bills and try to put something away for the future.

We simply cannot afford another four – or eight – years in the wilderness. That is why, everywhere I go, people come up to me, grip my hand or arm, and urge me to keep on running. That is why I continue in this race: because I believe I am best prepared to lead this country as President – and best prepared to put together a broad coalition of voters to break the lock Republicans have had on the electoral map and beat Senator McCain in November.

Recent polls and election results show a clear trend: I am ahead in states that have been critical to victory in the past two elections. From Ohio, to Pennsylvania, to West Virginia and beyond, the results of recent primaries in battleground states show that I have strong support from the regions and demographics Democrats need to take back the White House. I am also currently ahead of Senator McCain in Gallup national tracking polls, while Senator Obama is behind him. And nearly all independent analyses show that I am in a stronger position to win the Electoral College, primarily because I lead Senator McCain in Florida and Ohio. I’ve enclosed a detailed analysis of recent electoral and polling information, and I hope you will take some time to review it carefully.

In addition, when the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee – the one who would be the best President and Commander in Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people will have cast their votes for me.

I am in this race for them — for all the men and women I meet who wake up every day and work hard to make a difference for their families. People who deserve a shot at the American dream – the chance to save for college, a home and retirement; to afford quality health care for their families; to fill the gas tank and buy the groceries with a little left over each month.

I am in this race for all the women in their nineties who’ve told me they were born before women could vote, and they want to live to see a woman in the White House. For all the women who are energized for the first time, and voting for the first time. For the little girls – and little boys – whose parents lift them onto their shoulders at our rallies, and whisper in their ears, “See, you can be anything you want to be.” As the first woman ever to be in this position, I believe I have a responsibility to them.

Finally, I am in this race because I believe staying in this race will help unite the Democratic Party. I believe that if Senator Obama and I both make our case – and all Democrats have the chance to make their voices heard – everyone will be more likely to rally around the nominee.

In the end, I am committed to unifying this party. What Senator Obama and I share is so much greater than our differences; and no matter who wins this nomination, I will do everything I can to bring us together and move us forward.

But at this point, neither of us has crossed the finish line. I hope that in the time remaining, you will think hard about which candidate has the best chance to lead our party to victory in November. I hope you will consider the results of the recent primaries and what they tell us about the mindset of voters in the key battleground states. I hope you will think about the broad and winning coalition of voters I have built. And most important, I hope you will think about who is ready to stand on that stage with Senator McCain, fight for the deepest principles of our party, and lead our country forward into this new century.

The Hill, the influential Capitol Hill newspaper, has published a story about the possibility of the so-called dream ticket, pairing Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton on the November ballot. The headline of the piece cuts straight to the bottom line:

“Sen. Obama’s backers see dream ticket as nightmare”

Rep. Keith Ellison, an early, enthusiastic Obama supporter, is quoted touting the possibility of John Edwards as Obama’s running mate because “he hasn’t made as many people angry. Some of the things she has said and done and her husband has said and done have disappointed people in a serious way. The comment that she was there for [the] white working class was divisive. I would hope there is a black and Latino working class she would be there for.”

On Sunday, the New York Times delivered a startling SAY WHAT? moment in the midst of this historic Democratic presidential race. It’s analysis of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fading prospects, it started off, “If not her, who?” It then considered a raft of up-and-coming female politicians, including none other than Minnesota’s freshman senator, Amy Klobuchar.

It was startling, if only because “Klobuchar” and “presidential candidacy” have rarely, if ever, been mentioned in the same breath. But there was her picture, in full color, along with 11 other women the Times’ writer deemed up-and-comers. The story’s nickel assessment was merely glancing: “In the Senate, the names that come up most often are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.”

But for better or for worse, after less than two years in the Senate, Klobuchar’s name is out there. For the entire Times assessment of future female presidential prospects, go here.

No response yet from Klobuchar’s Senate office.

The tenor of the daily conference calls staged this morning by the Clinton and Obama campaigns couldn’t have been more starkly different.

Reporters did their level best to throw Clinton’s people on the defensive, even though aides said they have every intention of pushing onward. At one point, a reporter asked campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson point-blank: “Have there been tany discussions of not going forward?”

“No,” Wolfson replied curtly. “No discussions.”

When Obama’s folks got on the line, it was more like a victory lap than anything else, with campaign manager David Plouffe crowing, “We can see the finish line here.”

The campaign trotted out several of its heavy-hitting superdelegates, including Sen. John Kerry, the nominee of four years ago. Kerry said Tuesday’s results were “a giant and decisive stride toward the nomination,” adding: “Bottom line: He clearly did more than he had to. He beat every poll and every single expectation.”

Sen. Amy Kloubuchar took center stage for a few moments, harkening back to Obama’s blowout victory in the Minnesota precinct caucuses: “He did incredibly well in my state and unleashed an energy that will be impossible to contain.”

Pointing to Obama’s wins here, as well as in Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Colorado, Kloubuchar said “the heart of the heartland is with Barack Obama.”

As Politically Connected editor Dennis McGrath pointed out over at McMemo, the instant analysis about Tuesday’s results assessed Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects as, in the front page assessment of her hometown New York Post, “TOAST.”

If anything, the morning-after assessments from pundits and columnists are even more scathing. Here’s a sample:

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter: “Barack Obama not only nearly clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday night. He also answered a big question about the fall campaign. The glass jaw that Hillary Clinton and John McCain thought they saw turned out to be an illusion.”

Former Bush aide Matthew Dowd: “What do President Bush and Hillary clinton have in common? Neither had an exit strategy ready. The curtain on the long Clinton Broadway campaign is coming down. It hasn’t hit the floor yet, but it’s real close.”

The Politico’s Roger Simon:
“Hillary Clinton’s strategy for winning the Democratic nomination is now a fond wish wrapped in a desperate hope.”

The New York Daily News’ Michael Goodwin: “It’s over. Barack Obama now wears the crown of inevitability. Unless he falls off a cliff, or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright pushes him, he is going to be the Democratic nominee.”

The Times of London’s Gerard Baker: “An end to this apparently interminable contest is in sight at last.”

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass: “Her people will argue that she’s still politically alive. His people will say that the delegate math belongs to him. And what’s left, for a short while, are those angry men and women in those little boxes on TV, bickering at each other about Democrats denied their votes in Michigan and Florida. But it’s over for Hillary.”

There’s more out there — much more - but you get the drift.

The blogosphere and talk radio erupted Friday over a clip lifted from “The War Room,” the 1993 documentary about Bill Clinton’s victorious presidential run. An anonymous poster placed a 37-second snippet on the Web, pumping up the audio and adding subtitles purporting to echo the words on the soundtrack. In the clip, Mickey Kantor, a longstanding close adviser to both Clintons, is shown saying “those people are [excrement].” The anonymous poster added subtitles that strongly suggest Kantor was referring to Indianans (who just happen to have a Democratic primary coming up Tuesday); Kantor said he was referring to pollsters.

More incendiary was his statement a few seconds later, supposedly describing white Indiana voters with the N-word. Kantor went ballistic, telling the Huffington Post, “I’ve never used that word in my entire life, ever, under any circumstance, ever. I have listened to [the video] and so have you. You can’t tell what it is I’m saying in that second sentence, you can’t decipher that.” He went on to threaten to slap a libel suit on whoever posted the clip — if that person can ever be found.

Adding to the murkiness was the fact that “The War Room’s” director D.A. Pennebaker promptly told The Washington Post that the clip had been doctored.

Judge for yourself. Here’s a longer excerpt from the film, minus the subtitles and audio enhancements added to the brief clip. Kantor’s quotes begin around the 4:50 mark and are almost totally inaudible.

Fairly funny time waster on a slow news day, making its way around the Web. Check it out.

Former President Jimmy Carter is flogging his newest book, a memoir about his mother, Lillian, and so has taken to the phone lines to do a virtual book tour. The book, “A Remarkable Mother,” is being published in conjunction with Mother’s Day and, in his words, is intended to show “in those ancient times of the 1920s and ’30s, here was a woman who was staunch in her beliefs and led a full life.”

In a telephone interview, Carter also spoke of his mother’s enlightened racial attitudes at a time when race relations in the South were anything but enlightened — which allowed the conversation to pivot to the current presidential campaign.

Carter said his mother would be “delighted” watching the Democratic presidential nominating campaign play out between the first plausible black candidate and the first plausible female candidate. “I don’t think she’d be concerned at all about the intensity between the two of them,” he said. “She never gave up a fight until it was over and I wouldn’t expect [she would expect either Obama or Clinton to do so.]”

Just for the record, Carter said he agrees with his mother — and doesn’t intend to tip his hand in the race (as a former president, he’s one of Georgia’s superdelegates) until after the final primaries on June 3.

He called the continuing brouhaha about the declarations of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright “completely superficial.” With his own long history of attending black churches, Carter said such rhetoric “is the kind of preaching I’ve seen constantly. We grew up that way, hearing preaching against the sin of racial discrimination.”

Although the thermonuclear attacks being lobbed by both the Clinton camp and the Obama camp have caused many Democrats to despair about the party’s prospects in November, Carter’s sanguine about the outcome. “It looks kind of dismal now,” he said, recalling his own successful race in 1976, when Republicans Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan tore each other to shreds. “Almost all the Republicans came back,” he said. “Parties always tend to come back together.”

Predictably, given the history of his post-presidential campaign, Carter is once again the center of controversy, this time for meeting the leaders of Hamas last week while on a visit to the Mideast. He has been criticized by the Bush Administration and representatives of the Israeli government, who regard Hamas as a terrorist organization (The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. went so far to call Carter “a bigot” with “bloody hands;” “I just ignore that kind of thing,” Carter said.”

“There’s nothing I need to apologize for,” Carter said. “It’s a mistake for Israel and the United States not to talk with Hamas … [t]hey won an election fair and square.” In considerably more detail, Carter defended his personal diplomacy Monday in a New York Times op-ed.

For quite some time now, there’s been a raging debate about whether Bill Clinton’s unscripted forays are helping or hurting his wife’s campaign. Over the weekend, a perceptible shift started, with several pieces accentuating the negative — hard.

A weekend piece in the Wall Street Journal described what it called the “BIllification” of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign. And while it described his stumping and talking as overall lending momentum to her campaign, it also recycled nuggets of the damage done:

His role has come at a cost — to morale among some campaign staff, relations inside the Democratic Party and with African-American leaders, and in the view of some, his own legacy. He has lost considerable credibility with many party leaders, who, as “superdelegates” to the party convention, will be crucial in determining who is the Democratic presidential nominee.

The New York Daily News, never a friend of the Clintons, weighed in with a piece that went so far as to suggest that his heart bypass surgery had wrought a change in his personality. It’s not-so-subtly headlined, “From Bubba to Flubba: Slew of gaffes makes pals wonder why Bill is losing it.”

Next up, Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, detailing Bill’s it’s-all-about-me-and-my-legacy style of campaigning, before cutting to the chase:

When Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign was launched, in January, 2007, her supporters feared that Bill would overshadow her … Now the constant fear is that he will embarrass her. When he makes news, it is rarely a good day for his spouse. Whether he was publicly comparing Barack Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s campaigns in the eighties or privately, and apoplectically, complaining that Bill Richardson broke his word by endorsing Obama, every story has seemed to reinforce an image of Clinton as a sort of ill-tempered coot driven a little mad by Obama’s success.

Finally, Bloomberg’s Al Hunt all but buried him, calling him the “biggest loser of the campaign:”

The most talented and resilient politician of this generation has damaged his standing with gaffes, political miscalculations and a series of paranoiac, volcanic eruptions.

A common question these days among political heavyweights — including longtime Clinton devotees — is this: How can a guy this smart act so dumb?

Granted, this piling-up of the convention can do a 180-degree flip in an eyeblink, but the convergence of such a chorus is striking.

Update: The drumbeat is continuing. The New York Times has now weighed in. So has Newsweek, calling Clinton “the most tragic figure of the 2008 campaign.”

A couple of images have been floating around the web that give striking portraits of how the battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has been playing out across the nation.
First, there’s a geographic rendering:

Next, what’s called an “decision tree” that shows how counties nationwide have been breaking for the candidates:

Not breaking news exactly, but worth chewing over.