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.

Note From AOL: Our weekly Straw Poll was restarted again on Monday, May 12 at 2:00PM ET. After voting, check back again next Monday for a chance to recast your ballot.

Rasmussen Reports, the widely respected polling organization, has decided it has seen enough. From the company's Web site:

...while Senator Clinton has remained close and competitive in every meaningful measure, she is a close second and the race is over. It has become clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.

At the moment, Senator Clinton's team is busily trying to convince Superdelegates and pundits that she is more electable than Barack Obama. For reasons discussed in a separate article, it doesn't matter. Even if every single Superdelegate was convinced that the former First Lady is somewhat more electable than Obama, that is not enough of a reason to deny him the nomination.

With this in mind, Rasmussen Reports will end our daily tracking poll of the Democratic race and focus exclusively on the general election competition between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

What can you say? When polling firms join the chorus and decide there's nothing more to say about this race, you'd think that reality would have to start sinking in with one HRC. All that's really left for her now is to further divide and damage the party. It's her choice, I guess.

To expand upon my post yesterday about how Hillary Clinton isn't giving up in her White House bid, over a dozen "swing state" Democratic members of Congress today sent a letter to others in their party saying Clinton is the best option for the "top of the ticket."

Not the best option for just "the ticket," but "the top" of the ticket. That's what's needed to beat John McCain in the general election, they say. The text of the letter is after the jump.

The thing is, they may be right when it comes to battleground states.

Three simultaneous Quinnipiac University Swing State polls released May 1 show that among white working class voters, Clinton has strong leads over McCain - and runs much better than Barack Obama - in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, he's in a tight race with McCain in Florida and Ohio, but takes Pennsylvania.

Quinnipiac pollsters say this is Clinton's strongest overall performance in those three vital swing states in the past two years. This survey also found:

-Florida: Clinton tops McCain 49 - 41%; McCain gets 44% to Obama's 43%
-Ohio: Clinton beats McCain 48 - 38%; McCain gets 43% to Obama's 42%
-Pennsylvania: Clinton tops McCain 51 - 37%; Obama leads McCain 47 - 38%

"If the super delegates are looking at electability, these results could be a shot in the arm for Sen. Clinton," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "No one has won the White House since 1960 without carrying two of these three swing states, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And she clearly is running much better against Sen. McCain than is Sen. Obama, at least for now."