And, Now, It's On to Indiana and North Carolina

Barack Obama can't close the deal.

That's what Maureen Dowd says in the New York Times.

"Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival," writes Dowd. "Certainly Howard Dean will be of no use steering her to the exit. It’s like Micronesia telling Russia to denuke."

Dowd seems frustrated and impatient that Clinton won't get out of the way.

But she did win the Pennsylvania primary yesterday -- fair and square. And she did (apparently) get just about enough votes to claim the double-digit victory in percentage points that the "experts" said she needed to keep her campaign for the nomination alive.

Perhaps the temptation was just too great to resist.

But Chuck Raasch, political writer for Gannett News Service, called the outcome in the Keystone State a "bitter ending" for Obama.

"Bitter?" Perhaps. But an "ending?" I don't know if I would say that.

I mean, what has really changed since they counted the votes in Pennsylvania?

Obama still leads Clinton in delegates. We have one less primary remaining on the political calendar -- and all of the largest states have been heard from now.

Unless Clinton can win all the remaining primaries by margins that are much larger than her strongest showings so far, she can't win the nomination without the help of the superdelegates. But Obama probably can't win enough delegates in the remaining primaries and caucuses to clinch the nomination, either.

Tuesday's victory prevented a predicted stampede of the superdelegates to Obama's side -- but that may be only a temporary reprieve.

We'll be seeing more of an attempt from both sides to woo the superdelegates in the coming weeks -- what John Podhoretz calls, in Commentary, the "big superdelegate suck-up."

Superdelegates know that neither Obama nor Clinton can win the nomination simply through the primaries and caucuses and pledged delegates. Superdelegates know that the decision will come down to them. And superdelegates also know that it is to their advantage for the campaign to continue and for the barrels of pork they're being offered to get bigger and bigger.

According to Pew Research Center, "electability" is an important factor in the hunt for superdelegates, but "neither candidate has a demonstrable advantage to tout."

So I wouldn't expect a stampede of superdelegates until either Clinton or Obama actually wraps up the nomination. Once that's a done deal, everyone will want to be with the winner.

But, until we know who the winner is, accumulating offers of goodies for their votes makes the superdelegates the real winners.