Opinion: Last night, reality caught up with Hillary Clinton

By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist

Last night, reality caught up with Hillary Clinton.

The question now is how long it will take for that reality to sink in.

Barack Obama's big win in North Carolina, combined with the late night/early morning drama that turned Indiana into only the narrowest of wins for Clinton, did three important things: It ended any sense of momentum she had generated with her sizable victory in Pennsylvania.

It demonstrated that, at least as far as the relevant Democratic primary voters were concerned, Obama has survived the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks.

And in doing both those things, it obliterated the arguments Clinton hoped to use to sway the superdelegates.

Earlier in the evening, when it looked as though she would win by 4 or 5 percentage points in Indiana, some in the Clinton camp tried to pitch this as a basic split, a night when she had offset Obama's strong victory in North Carolina with an impressive win of her own.

But when the votes finally dribbled in from dilatory, dawdling, inefficient, laggardly, lollygagging, national-bedtime-delaying, CNN-and-MSNBC-annoying, slower-than-molasses-in-January-and-with-no-good-explanation Lake County, it was clear no such case could plausibly be made.

With the final results, Obama increased his lead in both the popular vote and in pledged delegates, effectively destroying the arguments that the Clinton camp has been making. That is, that she is closing the gap on both those fronts, even as his candidacy is fading.

That's all the more remarkable coming after several rocky weeks for him – and several supposedly strong ones for her.

But despite the obsessive media focus on his former pastor's rhetorical pyrotechnics, Obama turned in a much stronger overall showing than she did.

That demonstrated that the Wright controversy has neither crippled his candidacy nor even raised enough doubts among Democrats about the fall effects of that controversy for them to indulge in serious buyers' remorse.

That doesn't, of course, resolve the question of who would be the strongest general election candidate. At different points in this race, each candidate has had periods when he or she could claim that status.

But it resolves what is currently a more crucial issue: Will the results in the last leg of the primary season mark such a change from what has previously occurred that they will force superdelegates to do something they would otherwise be very reluctant to do? That is, contravene both the popular vote and pledged delegate totals by handing the nomination to Clinton.

Last night's answer was a resounding no. Nor will arguments that Clinton does better with working class voters, or that she has done better in the battleground states, change that.

Now that Obama has demonstrated that the wheels haven't come off his campaign, now that he has shown some real resilience of his own, superdelegates will make their decision based on what has happened in the primary season, and not on what might happen in the general election.

And that's very good news for Obama – and very bad news for Clinton.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com.