Questions that Tuesday’s primaries could answer

The one certain way to end the race is for Barack Obama to win both Texas and Ohio...

• Will the Democratic race end with Tuesday’s results?

The one certain way to end the race is for Barack Obama to win both Texas and Ohio — no small undertaking. That would erase any doubts that may exist about his ability to take big states or to energise a working-class base in a crucial general-election state. It would create enormous pressure on Hillary Rodham Clinton to bow out. Even an Obama victory in one of Tuesday’s two big states is likely to result in the race ending, although perhaps not immediately. Former President Bill Clinton established that benchmark recently and though his wife’s advisers have tried to back away from it, many Democrats have adopted it as the measure by which they judge Tuesday’s results.

“WJC’s (William Jefferson Clinton’s) comments were extremely harmful in managing expectations,” noted one Democratic strategist.

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If she wins Ohio and Texas, then the race will continue to Pennsylvania and perhaps beyond. She will have some fresh momentum, but Obama will still have more delegates.

• Can Clinton ever overtake Obama in pledged delegates?

Every political junkie around the country is spending hours with Slate’s delegate calculator on the Internet or with more complex spreadsheets that are being passed around by e-mail. Plug in what you think the results will be in Ohio or Texas or Pennsylvania or Puerto Rico and see how the delegates divide between Clinton and Obama. It’s more fun than filling out those Final Four brackets.

The latest Associated Press delegate counts available on washingtonpost.com show Obama with 1,352 and Clinton with 1,239, a margin of 113. CNN says Obama is leading by 143. The Obama and Clinton campaigns are in relative agreement. After Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont have been counted, only 611 pledged delegates will be left in the remaining contests. No matter how you run the numbers, the conclusion is always the same: There is virtually no realistic way for Clinton to emerge from the primary-caucus season with more pledged delegates than Obama.

• How badly will competition split the Democratic party?

Democrat Ron Klain was the most emphatic in arguing that a continuation of the race will not damage the party. “What I see are record numbers of donors giving to the candidate, record numbers of volunteers in both campaigns, and record numbers of voters participating,” he wrote. Other Democrats generally agree with that, but worry that bad feelings could develop if Obama wins Texas or Ohio and Clinton continues to fight on. If Clinton kept going against overwhelming odds, one strategist said, the party could emerge divided.

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