As Clinton moves forward, Democrats may have taken a step back

[COMMENTARY] Tuesday night was not a good night for the Democratic Party.

There were two possibilities going into the key primaries in Ohio and Texas: either Sen. Barack Obama was going to distance himself further from Sen. Hillary Clinton, all but cripple her campaign and assure himself of the Democratic presidential nomination, or Clinton was going to make just enough of a comeback to keep her campaign limping along into Pennsylvania and the remaining primary states.

The second outcome — Clinton won both Ohio and Texas Tuesday night — is the worst possible result for the party as it heads into the general election because it brings back into the realm of possibility a whole range of nasty fights that could damage the party in the months ahead. Had Hillary lost ground, the odds of those fights happening would have been greatly diminished.

At this point it is all but impossible for Clinton to win the delegate count or the popular vote. She made some small gains Tuesday night, but she’s still well behind in both and would have to win by very large margins in the remaining states to overtake Obama by either measurement. Obama is almost certain to go to the national convention with the lead in pledged delegates, popular vote and number of states won.

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But it also means Clinton will arrive at the convention close enough in delegates and votes to make the argument that she won the larger states, and the big swing states that will determine the November general election. She will then make that argument to the superdelegates to vote for her and swing the nomination in her favor. That would be a disaster for the Democratic Party this fall.

Al Gore, Howard Dean and many other Democratic leaders have been terrified of that eventuality for weeks, but with Obama’s recent momentum it looked like the worst was going to be avoided. It appeared Obama would have a large enough lead by the time of the convention that Clinton could not justify a push to get the superdelegates to swing the vote in her favor.

But if the gap is fairly small, if the superdelegates do give Clinton the nomination over a candidate who got more popular votes and more pledged delegates during the primaries and caucuses, it will hand the Republicans a huge issue in the general election and scare swing voters away from voting Democratic.

If Clinton were to try such a move and succeed, it would rightly be seen by both Republicans and Democrats as undemocratic, a power grab by party officials to ignore the will of the rank and file. Exit polls in Texas Tuesday showed that two-thirds of Democrats want the superdelegates to vote for whichever candidate wins the primaries. It would also reinforce the perception that Clinton is ruthless and power hungry and will do anything to win, even if it’s hypocritical (remember the mantra of 2000: every vote counts) and even if it violates the will of the rank and file.

The ones who can avoid that outcome are the superdelegates themselves. If they decide, en masse, to vote to ratify the will of the voters rather than negate that will, this dystopic outcome will be avoided. The fact is that the superdelegates already have had the only vote to which they are entitled — the vote in their own state primary or caucus. If a bunch of bigwigs and power brokers from the party get a second vote and use it to reverse the clearly expressed will of Democratic voters, I predict that Clinton will lose the general election in the fall.

Basically, Obama needs to go to the convention with a lead of more than one touchdown to prevent Clinton from trying a “Hail Mary” pass that, should it succeed, would do enormous damage to the Democratic Party’s prospects for winning the general election.

That might still be avoided if Obama wins the remaining primaries in dominant fashion. But Tuesday night’s results make it a lot less likely. And that means the chances of a nasty convention fight over whether to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates and over the superdelegates is far more likely today than it was two days ago. And if that happens, the Democrats will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.