In the future, I hope that we can all look back on Obama’s long, meandering path to the nomination (and, hopefully, the presidency) with fondness. I hope we can reminisce about how Clinton’s relentless attacks just toughened him up for November, how she preempted the Republican attack machine by doing their work for them, and how all our fretting was for naught. However, though I’m loath to admit it, my hopes are fading fast.

Or - as Clinton would put it - “the tide is turning” against them.

As it stands right now, it’s impossible for Clinton to win with pledged delegates. She’s too far behind Obama, and she has plum run out of time. It’s not going to happen. This matters a lot, of course, least of all because no Democratic candidate has ever won the nomination without leading in pledged delegates.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s campaign – who I will hereafter refer to as the Hillary truthers – is having none of this. On Tuesday night of last week, campaign chairman and head truther Terry McAuliffe instead trumpeted the popular vote as a new measure of victory. However, even if the popular vote decided the nomination – and it doesn’t – the math isn’t looking too favorable here, either.

Unless McAuliffee is counting the outlawed Michigan and Florida primaries, Clinton’s likely too far behind on this metric to win as well. She is still 600,000 votes behind Obama in the popular vote, and he is looking to make up a good chunk of the 200,000 or so votes he lost in Pennsylvania in the upcoming North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

That is the stark math of defeat. And with that laid out in front of them, Clinton and the Hillary truthers may want to take a long, hard look at the three options they have left. Of the three, only one leaves her with a modicum of dignity at the end. She would do well to choose wisely.

In the first scenario, she trudges on to Indiana and North Carolina, running a tame, respectful campaign. Then – after losing in North Carolina and, likely, Indiana – she drops out of the race, licks her wounds, and makes up for her scorched earth strategy by campaigning relentlessly for Obama in the general.

This is obviously the best scenario for her, Obama, and the party. As for her, it leaves open the option of running again in the future (whether for president or another higher office), and she can finally get to patching together some of the relationships she and Bill have spent the past few months laying waste to. Obama benefits too – he can start campaigning against the Republican he’s supposed to be campaigning against. And the party can begin the long, arduous task of mending itself.

In the second option, Clinton hangs in the race and ratchets up the attacks, continuing to thwack Obama with the heavy, well-used pages she has wrenched so readily out of the Republican playbook. The race lurches towards the finish line, with Clinton eventually losing because, well, that’s what happens to candidates who don’t win more pledged delegates than the other candidate. Hillary truthers, take note.

This scenario offers little in the way of merriment or viability, though. Clinton effectively ends her career, and she and Bill are left on the sidelines of a Democratic party that they once, for all intensive purposes, ran. Obama, on the other hand, slumps into the general election against McCain, who will pick up right where Hillary left off with the slander and innuendo and race-baiting and prevaricating. Then, if Obama loses, America stumbles through another four years of tragedy, this time with Calamity John at the reins.

And what, pray tell, lies beyond door three? The candidates continue to beat each other up as the primaries lumber on, and we end up in a Denver deadlock. There, Clinton is able to sway enough superdelegates over to her side to usurp the public’s will, and she – and the truthers – manage to wrest the nomination away from the first legitimate African-American presidential candidate in history. The Democratic Party is likely torn asunder, with the millions of new or rejuvenated voters that Obama brought into the campaign disenfranchised by their own party.

The general election will proceed, and Clinton will likely lose for a couple of reasons. First is that she will have alienated the (more than) half of the voters that wanted Obama to win, and deserved to have their voices heard. The second is that she will have yanked the race so far to the right that McCain – being, after all, a Republican – will simply outflank her, especially on national security, sending her career to an ignominious conclusion. And if she wins, we get at least four more years of reinvigorated partisan bickering, and burrow deeper into a status quo that’s not working for anybody.

So there are three options right now, two of which could charitably be called disastrous. So what will it be? As we slouch towards Denver, will things fall apart, or can the party hold together? Will we be able to look back on this race with fondness, or regret?

It’s in Clinton’s hands now.

Image:  ABC