“When Hillary Clinton questioned Gen. David Petraeus last September, she famously said that to believe his description of progress in Iraq required ‘a willing suspension of disbelief.’ After the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, the same may now be true about her case for winning the Democratic nomination. It’s not that she can’t win, but with only 217 delegates up for grabs in the six remaining contests, the scenario for victory has become more fantastical, narrow, and painful. Clinton won Indiana, but, as she pointed out repeatedly to Petraeus, individual victories — even a surge of them in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania — don’t change the whole story. The larger reality still holds. Barack Obama has the lead in elected delegates and the popular vote. Those leads increased Tuesday as he widened his margin by 15 delegates and roughly 200,000 more votes. For Clinton to move ahead in those numbers now, she must bring more states into the union.” (05/07/08)