Is it really possible that the world has passed the Clinton’s by?

Yesterday’s total immolation of Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama – along with his 5 previous double digit wins since Super Tuesday – reveal as much about how badly the Democratic party truly wants to move on from the Clinton era as it does the wild popularity of Obama. When the electorate rejects you by 3-1 and 4-1 margins, a little voice in your head must begin asking you “How much more of this kind of humiliation can you take?”

The answer in Hillary’s case is thankfully, not too much more. The exit polls from yesterday in Virginia and Maryland show how much her base of supporters have betrayed her. In Maryland, 62% of Democratic voters were women – and Obama got 55% of their vote. Hillary captured the white women 56-38 and that was it. She lost single women by an astonishing 59-38. In New Hampshire, Clinton won a large plurality of the women’s vote while getting 50% of the single women’s vote in a 5 person race.

The tide has turned.

In Virginia, by a more than 2-1 margin, people preferred “change” to “experience.” Obama also destroyed Hillary in every income group – even the under $50,000 voters who had been her bedrock support in previous primaries. In Maryland, she barely edged Obama in the over 60 age group 48-47 – another leg of her base she needs to remain upright.

Clinton handily won white Democrats and Hispanics. But with Obama winning 2/3 of independents and 80-90% of African Americans, it is very difficult to see where Clinton can cobble together the blocs necessary to win a primary. If she has lost the women’s vote (especially single women), the lunch pail crowd, and the nursing home contingent, where does she go for votes?

She was in Texas yesterday appealing to Hispanics. This is a good idea but she will need to find a way to peel support away from Obama if she expects to win. In South Carolina, Bill Clinton successfully brought a majority of white Democrats to her side. But they lost the primary because blacks and independents turned out in record numbers for Obama. Now Hillary apparently can’t win a majority of women, of Democratic men, independents, or of any large bloc of Democratic voters who she or her husband had been able to count on in elections.

Watch Wisconsin next week. If the same gloomy numbers emerge for Clinton, she may as well pack it in. Ohio is a state much like Wisconsin with a large union presence, a smaller percentage of African Americans, and a large white middle class. Indeed, in some polls, she is down by as much as 11 points already – and that was before the blow out last night along the Potomac river.

She has done all the traditional things to get her campaign righted. She has fired people – only to discover that when she fired her Latina campaign manager she angered her most reliable base group; the Hispanics. She is ignoring Obama’s victories (as if putting her hands over her ears and screaming NEENER! NEENER! NEENER! the bad news will just go away and she won’t have to think about it much). And she is plugging away, not slowing down her pace, still fighting – to the end.

This is how the Clinton era in national American politics will end. They came into the national limelight hand in hand, a true ‘90’s “power couple” with a frightening amount of ambition and determination, lighting up the sky like exploding fireworks and laying waste to Washington as well as their personal friendships. The number of broken lives they left in their wake is astonishing – even for a politician. Harassed women, aides thrown to the wolves, friends thrown to the prosecutors – a body count extraordinary in its diversity. White, black, Hispanic, Asian, women, men, – a microcosm of the identity politics they played with such relish – and such ruthlessness.

Another loss like Virginia and Maryland in Wisconsin will almost certainly increase calls for her to drop out in the name of party unity. Some of her Super Delegates may even begin to desert her. It will be at that point that she will look at Ohio and Texas and perhaps realize the futility of continuing on. She probably won’t drop out at that point despite the hopelessness of her situation. But her humiliation will be complete. The once vaunted Clinton political machine would have been destroyed by newcomer – a self styled new Democrat who rejected the politics of personal destruction in favor of a kinder, gentler approach.

They will go out humiliated by an electorate that will end up rejecting their brand of “take no prisoners” politics in favor of the empty platitudes of an interloper. How it will gall both of them, in love with the intricacies of policy, to see a candidate eclipse them who eschews specifics in favor of atmospherics and feel-good populism.

There will be no political obituary for Hillary. She has a career and a future in the Senate if she chooses. But she has never seemed to me to be a “settler.” Her every move in the Senate these last 8 years has been a calculation on how it will affect her run for the president. To simply be a senator for the sake of serving the country? I just don’t know.

The Clinton’s will not fade into the background – Bill will see to that. But their influence will be severely weakened. They will probably remain personally popular – as long as they can raise gobs of money for their friends. But the heady days of being on top and riding the tiger are almost certainly over.