Every time one thinks the Clinton campaign has plumbed the ultimate and final depths of depraved indifference to progress, along comes another story dispelling the hope that it has indeed bottomed out.

In just the last 48 hours or so, we first witnessed Hillary's reintroduction of the passing, near-past preacher controversy, lest voters begin to miss the sight, sound and smell of sniper fire in the morning. But then, on the heels of that came another story from the Washington Post [1] that confirmed the utter absence of fair play and honorable boundaries at Clinton HQ. To wit ...

Barack Obama, as we know, "offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated." Sounds like a smart political tack, as well as an overdue approach to busting ideological gridlock in the pursuit of sound public policy. John McCain, on the other hand, has "already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, 'a down-the-line liberal.'" Well that was expected, because that, after all, is his job.

But then came the kicker: Hillary Clinton's "campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he took in the past." Said Clinton-sniper Mark Penn: "The evidence is that the more [voters] have been learning about him, the more his coalition has been shrinking."

That would be the coalition that will be facing John McCain's coalition in the general. Obama's "ability to appeal to independents and even Republicans has been one of his main attractions for Democrats eager to retake the White House, and a cause for concern among some GOP leaders" -- a concern that is now easing with their every she-said-what? smile.

Republican leaders never dreamed their best ally would be a Democratic "liberal" denouncing as unacceptably liberal the party's presumptive nominee. It wasn't enough to smear Obama as an unfit commander in chief; now he's painted pink, to boot.

Those out-of-touch, island-stranded Japanese soldiers had a better chance of defeating the combined Allied Forces in 1946 than Mrs. Clinton stands against Obama. Only because he can't in his wildest dreams imagine a more appetizing opponent, paleoconservatism's Pat Buchanan still propagandistically puts her chances at about 20 percent. The New York Times' David Brooks recently put them at five, and the balance of political observers who can add puts them at a nano-fraction above zero. Last night on "Countdown," for instance, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter described Hillary's campaign as one in its "death throes."

Yet Hillary keeps whipping up the blind zeal of her scattered troops. Get out there and vote and agitate against the unfit pinko and we'll see where things stand "in three months."

If a week is a lifetime in politics, then in three months the Democratic Party will have long since entered the afterlife. It will be but the ghostly outline of what it was when Obama numerically nailed down the nomination last month.

And there's proof, or at least a leading indicator. According to Gallup [2], "Twenty-eight percent of [Hillary's supporters] indicate that if Clinton is not the nominee — and Obama is — they would support McCain." True, "it is unknown how many Democrats would actually carry through" on that threat, because they may be speaking only out of a heated passion that will pass.

"Still," as Gallup goes on to observe, "when almost 3 out of 10 Clinton supporters say they would vote for McCain over Obama, it suggests that divisions are running deep within the Democratic Party. If the fight for the party's nomination were to continue until the Denver convention in late August, the Democratic Party could suffer some damage as it tries to regroup for the November general election."

Denver in August? By then the Democratic Party will resemble Nagasaki, same month, 1945. Even by June, the situation will seem like Midway. Forced peace negotiations are the only answer -- now.

If Hillary differed dramatically from Obama in policy solutions to the gargantuan problems we face after more than seven years of George W. Bush's catastrophic stewardship, then one could understand and even sympathize with a principled resistance. But there is no such dramatic difference. Her rearguard actions are merely the stuff of Clinton ego, Bush stubbornness and Hirohito fantasy. And with profoundly predictable consequences -- another four years of Wild West foreign policy and Gilded Age fiscal management.

There is increasing talk of some sort of "superdelegate primary" in June. The responsible ones won't wait. They'll announce their inexorable intentions now and force this pointless, suicidal war to an end.