Hillary Clinton's In It To Not Win It

Tonight, Barack Obama is expected to win enough delegates in Oregon to have finally squirreled away a clear enough majority the Democratic primaries.

However, Hillary Clinton will continue to soldier on…

But while she presses forward, aides say she is determined neither to be pushed from the race prematurely nor to be seen as doing anything to damage Obama's prospects of winning in November if he emerges as the nominee. Her campaign team believes that is the best way to bring the party together as quickly as possible once the nomination contest is over.

Her advisers say that a major reason she does not want to be pressured out of the race is that she believes it will be easier to bring her supporters over to Obama once the primaries are over if they think she was able to finish the nomination battle on her own terms.

If that's true, then that is a quite noble — albeit somewhat obscure and incredibly expensive — gesture on her part. But, then, we don't want to cause more disenfranchised voters like all those incredibly bitter Joe Biden supporters.

So, what do you think Obama's planning to say in his Oregon victory speech tonight?

Nothing. He's not going to be in Oregon…

Instead, he has chosen to be in Iowa, where his victory in the caucuses in January turned the Democratic race upside down. There, at a rally in Des Moines, he is expected to declare that he has secured a majority of the pledged delegates currently eligible to attend August's Democratic convention in Denver.

Obama and his advisers insist the event will stop short of a declaration that he has won the nomination. But it will be seen as another signal to superdelegates to climb aboard his bandwagon as quickly as possible.

Hmmmm. Classy move.