Hillary Refuses To Quit

Hillary defies calls from pundits and party elders for her to quit the race and back Obama:

"There are millions of reasons to continue this race: people in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, and all of the contests yet to come," Clinton told reporters Friday. "This is a very close race and clearly I believe strongly that everyone should have their voices heard and their votes counted."

[. . .]

"There are some people who are saying, you know, we really ought to end this primary, we just ought to shut it down," she said in Mishawaka, Ind., drawing cries of "No, no!" inside a packed gymnasium.

[. . .]

I look forward to campaigning over the next several months.

The Democrat's fuzzy delegate math continues to make a Hillary nomination a long shot. She trails Obama among pledged delegates and is not expected to close that gap even if she does well in the 10 remaining primaries. She also trails in the popular vote and probably cannot make up the deficit without do overs in Michigan and Florida, whose Democratic voters were disenfranchised by the Democratic party.

There seems little doubt that the Democratic nomination will be decided by "superdelegates" -- some 800 elected officials and party insiders who can support any candidate for the nomination. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told CBS News that the superdelegates need to decide whether Hillary or Obama gets the Democratic nomination before July. Dean wants to avoid the appearance that the Democratic nominee was chosen in a back room deal by party insiders even though that is exactly what they will do.

You can listen to Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy's call for Hillary to quit in the following video report from MSNBC's Don Abrams: