David, one of the Campaign Spot readers in uniform, makes the case for not counting out Hillary Rodham Clinton just yet. His thinking overlaps quite a bit with mine.

David thinks Hillary losses in Hawaii and Wisconsin win are “baked in” to the current primary pie. I agree, although I think that if the results of Wisconsin’s polls are accurate, America’s Dairyland could be closer than many thought. (Hillary could argue, if she managed to pull off the upset, that out of the three most recently announced states, NM, HI, and WI, that Obama only won the state he had lived in. Believe me, we’ve heard more implausible spins this year.)

David suggests that if the “pro-Obama drumbeat has not shown up in Texas and Ohio polling by now, I think there is a good chance that HI/WI wins for Obama will not change the current dynamic.” He’s probably right, but I’d make a note of caution. The story of the Democratic race for much of this year has been about competing demographics – Obama racking up votes among African-Americans, young people, and latte liberals, etc. Hillary cleans up among middle-aged women, Latinos, and working class whites – i.e., the beer drinkers vs. the wine drinkers.

Team Hillary feels good that the key states for them are full of their best demographics, and the RCP averages have her up 10 percent in Texas, 17 percent in Ohio and 16 percent in Pennsylvania. But Obama made inroads into several key demographics in the Potomac primaries, particularly Latinos and women.

But the chances of Hillary “winning pretty” are rapidly dwindling; it’s likely she will soon be in a position of choosing to either win ugly or go home.

If she’s going to win by superdelegates, she’s going to have to provide them with a plausible argument to veto the more popular choice among Democrats. David contends she can argue that she can win the swing states, and while she’s going to have a tougher case with the head-to-head national polling numbers, she can make the case that if Obama has lost certain states in a primary, he would appear to have a challenge in winning them in the general election: Nevada, Arkansas, Tennessee, New Hampshire, New Mexico. She can argue that Democrats don’t know if Obama can win Florida and Michigan. She can point out that a lot of Obama’s wins came in states that are nearly guaranteed Republican (South Carolina, Alabama, Utah, Idaho, Alaska) or nearly guaranteed Democrat (Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois). (So did many of hers, of course.)

Probably her strongest argument is that she excites the swing or moveable demographics (working class whites, women, Latinos) while Obama energizes demographics that are near-certain to vote Democratic anyway.