Much has been written since Thursday's debate of Hillary Clinton's supposed "valedictory" moment at the end of the night, when she stated the following:

"No matter what happens in this contest—and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama.  Whatever happens, we're going to be fine."

The mainstream media has run with a narrative, ad nauseum, that this speech was a sign Hillary has accepted that she cannot win, and that she is emotionally preparing herself, her staff, and her supporters for a departure and concession speech that will likely occur on March 5, one day after the Ohio and Texas primaries.

Personally, I saw it as nothing more than a candidate who had tossed out a lame, snarky, and stupid line earlier in the debate about "change you can Xerox", changing course to close on a more positive note, to rectify viewers' overall impressions.  I don't think she's going anywhere.

Not that there aren't plenty of good reasons why Hillary should really consider dropping out not March 5, not after the superdelegates vote, not after a convention credentials brawl, but TODAY.

Barack Obama now leads in the total pledged delegate count 1193 to Clinton's 1034—a margin of 159.  Wait, shouldn't we include Clinton's beloved superdelegates?  Fine.  With all currently pledged superdelegates, he still leads 1374 to 1275.  The remaining 380+ superdelegates also appear to be slipping away.

Obama is also ahead in the popular vote by almost a million votes.  While the popular vote doesn't technically matter, that massive lead makes it impossible for Hillary to claim that his delegate lead does not reflect voter preference.

And as everyone not living under a rock has been repeatedly reminded, Senator Obama has won the last eleven primaries and caucuses.

Senator Clinton has stated that the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 constitute a "firewall" for her flagging campaign, one she will win, and thus revive her candidacy with the large delegate infusion these densely populated states provide.  But, assuming even that she could win both, to borrow from Bill Clinton, it is a "fairy tale" to assume that her delegate take for both could somehow surpass Obama's current lead.

That is because of the Democratic Party's much-discussed proportional delegate appropriation system.  If Barack keeps a loss in these states to no wider than a 10% margin, it will be an effective tie as far as the delegate take is concerned.  A tie would not close Sen. Clinton's delegate deficit—it would obviously have zero impact.  She would have to win both states with approximately 65% of the vote, a feat she has been unable to accomplish in any one of the contests thus far.  Even in her home state of NY, she was only able to win with 57% of the vote.

What is, in fact, most illuminating about Clinton's "firewall" talk is that it reveals how her campaign still behaves as though winning states in the Democratic primary is akin to winning them in the Republican, which has a delegate winner-take all system.  If John McCain was in her position, winning TX and Ohio would save his campaign, even if he won by 1% in each, because he would take home all the delegates.  The fact that Penn, Wolfson, et al, still haven't digested the realities of the totally different proportional delegate system the Democrats use, at this point in the game, explains a lot about why Clinton's campaign strategy went flying off the tracks in February.

But all this aside, like I said earlier: I don't think she's going anywhere.

Why?

Rants like these.

Interviews like these.

There's been a lot of talk about what your campaign would do should it get to the convention.  Would you commit today to honoring the agreement made earlier not to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations?

Let's talk about the agreement.  The only agreement I entered into was not to campaign in Michigan and Florida.  It had nothing to do with not seating the delegates.  I think that's an important distinction.  I did not campaign—

The press seems to have missed the distinction if that's the case.  The talk is that you agreed not to seat the delegation.

That's not the case at all.  I signed an agreement not to campaign in Michigan and Florida.  Now, the DNC made the determination that they would not seat the delegates, but I was not party to that.  I think it's important for the DNC to ask itself, is this really in the best interest of our eventual nominee?  We do not want to be disenfranchising Michigan and Florida.  We have to try to carry both of those states.  I'd love to carry Texas, but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee.  Florida and Michigan are.  Therefore, the people of those two states disregarded adamantly the DNC's decision that they would not seat the delegates.  They came out and voted.  If they had been influenced by the DNC, despite the fact that there was very little campaigning, if any, they would have stayed home.  But they wanted their voices heard.  More than 2 million people came out.  I mean, it was record turnout for a primary.  Florida, in particular, is sensitive to being disenfranchised because of what happened to them in the last elections.  I have said that I would ask my delegates to vote to seat.

So your intention is to press this issue?

Yes, it is.  Yes it is.

Therein lies the heart of Clinton's remaining strategy to grab the nomination by tooth, boot, and claw, if necessary.  Scrape by in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania, where Gov. Ed Rendell is flexing serious muscle on her behalf.  Ignore party leaders' calls to drop out.  And more than anything, bang, bang, bang the drum loudly to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations.

Background: in the summer of 2007, the Florida and Michigan legislatures moved their primaries forward in the calendar to exert greater influence on the nominating process.  But, by scheduling their primaries before February 5, they broke rules set by both the Democratic and the Republican parties.  The GOP punished these states by stripping them of half of their delegates to to the Republican National Convention.  The Democratic National Committee took them all away.

The Democratic candidates were asked to sign a pledge not to campaign in either state, which they all did.  In Michigan, they all even took their names of the ballot—mysteriously, save Hillary Clinton.  When these "elections" rolled around in January, a complete absence of actual campaigning combined with sheer name recognition garnered Clinton the most "votes" of anyone in both Florida and Michigan.  In the latter, her only "opponent" was a check box named "other".  She still "beat" it by only 15 points.

The voting in these states was akin to a basketball game getting canceled by the league at the last second, then one team showing up, throwing free throws, and counting the score as a "win".

If Clinton can find some way to shame the DNC credentials committee into seating the Florida and Michigan delegates in August, she will.  It's her only chance at capturing the nomination, party rules, Democratic voters, and the general election be damned.  How many press conferences shouting "disenfranchisement" will it take before DNC elders get scared about the long-term effect not seating these delegates will have on the Democrats' efforts in purple Florida and Michigan?  The wounds from the 2000 Florida recount are still fresh enough for the party to avoid anything that tears open the scab of "disenfranchisement".

Never mind that the NY senator signed a pledge, along with Obama and the other Democratic candidates, not to campaign in these states.  She claims in the interview above that she was "not party" to the delegate slates being stripped.  Why then did the DNC ask her to sign the no-campaigning pledge, and why did she do so?  She could just as easily have said "no thanks", and gone right in campaigning in both.  But she didn't do that, did she?  She signed the pledge, and raised not a peep about "disenfranchisement" until she lost South Carolina by a staggering 32 points, and realized the nomination was no longer hers to lose.

If she takes this course of action all the way to the convention, nothing less than civil war will erupt within the Democratic Party.  If the DNC capitulates, she will have hypocritically shamed Howard Dean and the rest into breaking the very rules they had written and once enforced—rules she too had signed off on.  A massive chunk of the Obama coalition—young, first-time voters—will be so disgusted by this flagrant violation of democratic principles that they will stay home in November, and perhaps ditch the Democrats for good.  I can not even fathom how black voters, who have voted 9-1 for the first viable African-American candidate in history, will feel about their party if their voice is silenced in this craven manner.

If the DNC does not cave at the Denver convention, Clinton will still have succeeded in broadcasting to the entire nation, and, more importantly, bellwether states Florida and Michigan, that the Democratic Party does not care for their votes, and will most likely doom the party's chances in November.

A fight for Florida and Michigan is the only reason for Clinton staying in the race at this point.  Obama is now tied with her in Texas, and closing fast in Ohio.  Nothing less than a blowout in both states can save her candidacy—provided she plays by the rules.  And that blowout is not going to happen.

But if she is as intent on winning this thing as she sounds, mark my words: she is planning on winning it in Florida and Michigan, not Ohio and Texas.

She could, in fact, save the party from this personally orchestrated crisis by simply dropping out today.  All the superdelegates would then default to Obama, giving him a wide margin of hundreds of delegate votes at the convention. 

What could nominee Obama then do in Denver that would put this whole thing to bed?  Order the credentials committee to go ahead and seat the Florida and Michigan delegations.  Doing so would provide Clinton with just enough delegates to still lose the nomination, without "disenfranchising" anyone.

But for Clinton to make such a forward-thinking, selfless decision would seem out of character for the candidate we've come to know over the last two months.