First Read's Domenico Montanaro makes a good point about why things aren't looking good for Hillary Clinton even though she'll win big in West Virginia today. The problem? Numbers:

Obama has now picked up 25 (with Romer would be 26) [superdelegates] this past week. That's more delegates than Clinton will net out of the West Virginia's 28 delegates at stake. And if Obama rolls out four more, he'd have gained more superdelegates in the past week than there are delegates at stake in West Virginia.

First Read is apparently sorely in need of a copy-editor, but the inference is a valid one. With the superdelegates now going over to Obama in droves, the remaining delegates that Clinton will net from West Virginia and Kentucky will be all but negated. Even James Carville seems to know the end is nigh.

If Hillary is imploding, nobody told the good folks in West (By God!) Virginia and Kentucky. She's still showing huge margins of support.

RealClearPolitics has the roundup:

Suffolk is out with a new poll in West Virginia (May 10-11) showing Clinton with a 36-point lead:

Clinton 60
Obama 24
Undecided 8

And Research 2000 has new numbers in Kentucky (May 7-9), where Clinton also enjoys a substantial 27-point lead over Obama:

Clinton 58
Obama 31
Undecided 11

Even with results like this, we probably won't see another shift in the race back to Hillary. These results are "baked in," they are expected, and in fact anything less than a 20 point margin may be looked on as a Hillary loss. Apart from some handwringing over Obama's lack of appeal to Appalachian voters, the Democrats will remind themselves that most Americans aren't from the hills and hollers, and that will be that.

And Kentucky and West Virginia will go red in the fall. The Democrats will just have to win without them, if they can.

As expected following her blowout in NC and squeaker in IN:

The campaign is clearly running low on cash, although advisers would not say how much money - or how little - Mrs. Clinton currently has. The campaign had started April with over $10 million in unpaid debts, and Mrs. Clinton was vastly outspent by Senator Barack Obama in North Carolina and Indiana.

...

Mrs. Clinton had been increasingly relying on Internet donations this spring from new and small-amount contributors; the day after she won the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, the campaign brought in a record $10 million online. But Hassan Nemazee, one of Mrs. Clinton's national finance chairmen, put the amount she collected online in the 24 hours after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries at only "$1 million-plus."

...

Still, other top fund-raisers working for Mrs. Clinton said that enthusiasm among donors had fallen sharply and that they had little confidence there would be a financial turnaround. They said that some donors had questioned why they should give more money when another set of numbers - the calculus to win enough delegates for the nomination - seemed so against Mrs. Clinton at this point.

The one bright spot for Hillary is that the next two primaries are in extremely friendly Clinton territory. Check the map.

In a move that will rock the Democratic foundations, Barack Obama will reportedly announce his victory as the Democratic nominee following the May 20 primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. The bold (perhaps reckless) declaration will excite party loyalists and spark an aggressive response from the Clinton campaign.

Both sides will cite variously tortured numbers in support of their interpretations of the Democratic party's torturous nominating process. Obama's campaign will peg the threshold at 2,025 pledged and super-delegates (a tally excluding Florida and Michigan). Clinton will include those states and demand a total count of 2,209. Yet, Obama will not have met either of those markers following the May 20 primaries. Instead, Obama will have won the majority of pledged delegates (1,627) - excluding, of course, those from Florida and Michigan, which would raise the bar to 1,784 (which Obama will not likely reach on May 20). Clinton will also retort that pledged delegates alone do not win the contest, but only those Illuminati-esque super-delegate can finally award victory. And then there is the whole issue of the popular vote, which might not be in accord with the delegate count (with or without the two states in limbo).

Regardless of the dizzying math and rivaling perspectives, the inescapable result of an Obama declaration of victory will be that Clinton will cry foul. Both campaigns will then inundate the public with interpretations, constructions, statistics and a load of other perplexing formulations which will all boil down to calling the other candidate a cheat. The wedge between Obama and Clinton supporters will widen, and Clinton voters will engender animosities toward Obama which will make their conversion to his camp (following his inevitable nomination) all the more difficult. A Clinton vice-presidency will become less palatable as she resorts to personal dispersions against her too-presumptive challenger.

Obama's early declaration will be premature, and its effect will be to harden Clinton supporters and engulf the Democratic party in a bickering tainted with charges of fraud. Perhaps McCain could be so lucky that one of the campaigns would threaten a lawsuit. Obama's gamble will win him (unneeded) media attention, but it will not secure his nomination any sooner than would otherwise have occurred.

Hillary Clinton sent a letter to Barack Obama today asking him reject any proposals from the Democratic Party that would not count the 2.5 million people who voted in the Florida and Michigan primaries.

Bringing back the painful 2000 presidential election outcome which gave Florida voters the royal shaft, "as Democrats, we must reject any proposals that do the same," Clinton says.

The Michigan delegates agreed on a plan last night that would give Clinton 69 delegates and Obama 59 as a way to get the state's 157 delegates and 29 superdelegates to the convention. The state's Democrats want the national party's rules committee to vote on the plan during its May 31 meeting.

The text of the letter is after the jump.

Everyone's counting Hillary down and out for the count, but you gotta admit, the girl's got chops.

Despite everyone calling for her to throw in the towel, she's truckin' along, counting heavily on those white women who love her. She's still got Bill and Chelsea traipsing all over the country. The former president stopped in nine North Carolina towns Monday.

"I talked to a lot of people that day, and one thing was crystal clear -- people want Hillary to stay in this race until every last voter has a say," Bill told Hillary supporters in an e-mail today. "That's why Hillary and I are working so hard. That's why we've made a deep commitment to keep campaigning, keep fighting, and keep winning."

Hillary today was in West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon, Friday she will be in Oregon and Kentucky. Bill has five stops in West Virginia Friday.

While the Clinton camp continues to ignore calls from bigwig Dems to drop out for the good of the party, her campaign chairman says don't worry about a fight going all the way to the August convention. On the "Today" show, Terry McAuliffe promised that, no matter what, Hillary will only hang on for another month or so.

"It'll be over early June," McAuliffe said. "We've all said we'll be together at the end. If Hillary doesn't win, Hillary, (former) President (Bill) Clinton, myself, we'll be over there helping Senator Obama. And, likewise, Senator Obama will come together to help Hillary if she's the nominee."

McAuliffe said Hillary wants to make a point by staying in the race through the remaining primaries. He predicted she will win West Virginia next Tuesday, not that it'll make much of a difference for her. The remaining contests are Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, Puerto Rico on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota on June 3.

Indiana

The last two polls in IN show a commanding lead for Hillary of close to ten points. With plenty of rural and working class Dems, Obama has tough sledding here, but the research 2000 poll had him hoping.

Kentucky

No one really expects Obama to do well here, given that Kentucky is chock full of the types of folks that vote for Hillary by outstanding numbers. The latest Survey USA is no surprise, showing a 30+ margin for Hillary. This is not completely unexpected, but even so it plays well into the Hillary game plan. Following WV on May 13th, it's probably going to put appalachia solid for Hillary.

North Carolina

This is Obama's latest hill to die on to stop, once and for all, the Hillary machine. So far it's looking ok for Obama. The trend line shows clear movement, but he is probably holding his breath that the latest Wright flareup didn't kill his momentum. North Carolina's primary is heavy with minorities and college youth, but unfortunately for him, Hillary is close enough that she can make this a contest. And if she wins here, the race has probably shifted in her favor.

North Carolina is the Waterloo of this election.

Barack Obama's morning-after, might not be as gloomy as some would think . According to Marc Ambinder, he's set to unveil a slew of newly-minted superdelegate endorsements today (and no, John Mellencamp doesn't count). One of those, Oklahoma's Governor, Brad Henry, had previously said he'd wait until the convention to decide.

Make no mistake about it, Hillary Clinton notched a solid win in Pennsylvania. She won the popular vote of that state by roughly 200,000, and now trails Obama in that category by only half a million or so (excluding some caucus states, Michigan and Florida). So why are more superdelegates continuing to break for Illinois Senator? The answer is math.

As foretold in an earlier post, the delegate picture remains less of a bright spot for Clinton, despite her victory in Pa. CBS estimates that Clinton picked up a net of 9 delegates, and now trails Obama by 126 overall, and that's with superdelegates factored in. Without the fickle supers, RCP has Obama up 151 pledged delegates.

We've got 8 states yet to go, plus Guam and Puerto Rico, with a total of 408 pledged delegates to be awarded. 4 of the contests-Guam, Oregon, Kentucky, and South Dakota-are caucuses, a format in which Obama has dominated. The biggest remaining prize is North Carolina, where Obama looks to have a strong lead in the polls as well as the support from nearly all of the state's political machinery.

Given that Clinton's impressive 9-point win resulted in a pick up of just 13 delegates, it's not hard to see why, looking at what remains of this campaign, some supers have concluded that her resistance is futile.

Kentucky blog Polwatchers reports that in an effort to thwart online bullying Kentucky state legislator Tim Couch (apparently not the former University of Kentucky Quarterback) introduced a bill that would ban Kentuckians from anonymously posting comments on web sites.

"Some nasty things have been said about high school kids in my district, usually by other kids," Couch said. "The adults get in on it, too."

Though he introduced the bill, Couch will not peruse passage of it because of first amendment issues. The law would require that commenters register their real name, which would then be displayed when they post. They would also have to provide their home address and an email address. Site owners would be fines $500 the first time they posted an anonymous comment, all anonymous comments posted thereafter would cost a $1,000 each.

Ironically the post on Polwatchers drew quite a few anonymous commenters, as well as comments from people claiming to be Couch, the quarterback also named Tim Couch, sports commentator Jim Rome, football coach Butch Davis and irony itself.

Kentucky said adios to a scandal plagued Republican Ernie Fletcher and installed Steve Beshear as the new governor. Democrats also won the Attorney General, Audiotor, and Treasurer posts, while Republicans kept the Agriculture Commissioner and Secretary of State positions.

After Governor Paul Patton's scandal with his mistress and the current Fletcher regime, let's hope that Beshear can at least keep his nose clean.