Super Tuesday Part Deux

My worth-very-little guess is that the most likely outcome is that (with Clinton winning OH and RI, and Obama carrying VT) Obama wins the delegates in Texas and Clinton squeaks out a popular vote victory there. Should that come to pass, I think most of what Atrios says here is relevant:

I think candidates can stay in the race as long as they want, though I do think they all have an increasing obligation to keep criticisms responsible for the sake of the general, but I’m not sure I understand this particular line in the sand. If, say, Clinton wins Ohio, wins Texas by 1 point, but loses Texas in the delegates, is this really different from the same situation except with her losing Texas by one point? It doesn’t really seem to make any difference. I’m not trying to encourage her to drop out, I’m just not sure why that particular hurdle (if true) is meaningful.

An Obama win in Texas effectively ends the race. But I wouldn’t (so long as the campaign is minimally responsible) think to tell Clinton to drop out; it’s her decision when she wants to end the campaign, and I don’t think keeping some attention on the Democratic candidates is a bad thing. It’s also worth noting that if Clinton narrowly wins a narrow vote in Texas while losing the delegates it doesn’t mean anything. Not only because the nomination is decided by delegates not total votes, but because the strategic context affects the vote outcome. Acquiring delegates, after all, is the goal being pursued by the candidates, and Obama may have campaigned differently in a way that would have maximized his vote rather than delegate count. You can’t assume that a small vote advantage would have held up in a different set of rules, and under the rules we have whoever wins the delegates wins the state, period.