Here's the Strategy, Summed Up. In Case You Were Wondering

From a purely amoral strategic perspective, this seems to be the state of affairs vis-a-vis this endless endless Democratic primary. Obama: growing his support across demographic groups. He can't afford to alienate any groups because he still has a shot at increasing support across the board. Clinton, on the other hand, is trying not erode the support she has while trying to peel away Obama's support by going negative. She has obviously made the calculation that she has lost the African-American vote; therefore, she gains nothing--electorally and immediately, anyway--by sowing good will with them. She can, however, appeal to the working-class white vote and work to increase their skepticism/fear/distrust of Obama. It turns out, he's black!

Then of course, there's the fact that by pretty much any metric you choose to measure by--delegates, popular vote, national polls, potential red-state coattail effects--Obama comes out on top. Desperate times, and all that.

With all of this in mind, let me encapsulate the likely order of events between now and (dear lord, can it be that far away??) April 22, when the next primary happens in Pennsylvania.

1. At least one more interminable, inanely moderated debate.
2. More surrogates pointing out how black/non-Christian/scary/Other Obama is as well as reminding good folks of the evils of affirmative action (I hear Ferrarro's still touring the circuit). Said surrogates will be repudiated, eventually. Obama's campaign will try to balance on the line between smartly responding, overreacting, and sounding like one of those minorities always with the complaining and pointing fingers about racism, so that it gets to the point where everybody's so PC, you can't say anything anymore...
3. The nation will beg for mercy for it to end already.
4. There will be scary ads.
5. Pennsylvania will vote, Clinton will win by a relatively large margin courtesy of her hardcore base of support among working-class whites and women. She may even drive up her proportion of the white vote relative to what she did in Ohio, particularly among younger people.

After the dust settles, the math will not change significantly, but the Clinton argument will be that Obama is unelectable in the general election. The sad sad reason will be that he cannot capture enough of the white vote, he's the "black" candidate, our society is still too racist, etc. etc. Wedge wedge wedge.