The Uncertainty Strategy

Mark Schmitt explains why the Clinton campaign doesn't really want a resolution to the Florida/Michigan issue:

Contrary to the gullible media's belief that "time" is a "powerful ally" on Clinton's side, in fact, Clinton's only ally is uncertainty. The minute it becomes clear what will happen with Michigan and Florida -- re-vote them, refuse to seat them, or split them 50-50 or with half-votes, as some have proposed -- is the minute that Clinton's last "path to the nomination" closes. The only way to keep spin alive is to keep uncertainty alive -- maybe there will be a revote, maybe they'll seat the illegal Michigan/Florida delegations, maybe, maybe, maybe. In the fog of uncertainty, Penn can claim that there is a path to the nomination, but under any possible actual resolution of the uncertainty, there is not.

Yes. The strangest thing about the twilight campaign of the past several weeks is that under any other circumstances, it just wouldn't be happening. Or, rather, it would be like the last few races that Mike Huckabee ran -- covered as an amusing sideshow. But because of the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton and their close associates have been the leaders of the Democratic Party for so long at this point, they've been able to take a remarkably slender thread of hope and spin it into a full-fledged horse race. At this point, though, they're perpetrating something of a fraud on their many grassroots supporters who continue to invest money, time, and energy in an already-failed enterprise.

The bottom line, however, is that before the March primaries, Clinton looked doomed unless she could make up major ground in March. With all the March results in, Clinton hasn't made up any ground at all. That means she's doomed. The popular vote victory in the Texas primary is a nice moral victory for Clinton to console herself with, but the overall results just didn't create the kind of delegate count she needed to be viable.