If you must, you can still sketch a tenuous scenario in which Hillary can prevail, but the discord it would stir in Democratic ranks, particularly among African American and young voters, would damage the party for years. To do so, she would have to get the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to vote contrary to the wishes of Democratic primary and caucus voters, and prevail upon party committees to seat at full strength the Florida and Michigan delegations, even though Obama, in deference to the national party's rules, withdrew his name from the Michigan ballot. It would look to all the world like winning through chicanery, chiefly because that's exactly what it would be.

The bitterness and rage that this would engender among Obama supporters would be huge; the forthcoming Denver convention would probably turn into a 40th-anniversary rerun of the disastrous Chicago convention of 1968; and mobilizing what would otherwise be the core Democratic vote this fall would become a monumental challenge and, hence, a drain on party efforts to win over swing voters. The connection between the re-Clintonized party and black America would be gravely damaged; the connection between the party and most younger voters would be snapped. The Clintons prevail, that is, only by eating the Democratic young, by crippling the party, by damning themselves.

There's a name for this scenario, the only one in which Clinton defeats Obama. It's mutually assured destruction.

Sure, Clinton is free to press on. Whether that would be responsible of her is another matter.

The Wright controversy offered us an opportunity to talk about the need to create a government that tells the truth, that doesn't torture or kidnap or wage unjustifiable wars--a government worthy of its people and its trust. What we got instead, courtesy of Mr. Change We Can Believe In, was the usual pablum. "They offend me," Obama said of Wright's comments. "They rightly offend all Americans."

Let us all hold hands and be offended. Whatever it takes to stop us from thinking.

Since 9/11, our leaders have given every reason for Islamic terrorism except those which include the hard evidence. As the former head of the CIA unit tracking Osama Bin Laden, Michael Scheuer writes, "On no other foreign policy issue since the Cold War's end has the truth been so easy to establish on the basis of hard facts but so hard for Americans to see — primarily because their leaders eagerly distort or ignore the truth. At day's end, each (leader) is ready to intervene abroad to champion abstractions such as democracy rather than U.S. interests, each is ready to spend the lives of soldiers and Marines to do so, and each advances the Islamist cause by failing to see that Muslim hatred is motivated by U.S. interventionism more than any other factor."