The USA Today headline [1] -- "More than half of Clinton backers still not sold on Obama" -- was more than a trifle misleading, and the story's lede wasn't much better: "Fewer than half of Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters in the presidential primaries say they definitely will vote for Barack Obama in November."

Upon reading that, yet going no farther, one is apt to promptly belch forth, O Sweet Mary Mother of God, this is the End Times, panic time, or at least passport-renewal time. Obama is going down. His would-be forces are so badly divided, failure is the only option. And upon that thought, the story would have had its intended, bracing effect.

If, on the other hand, you are one of the gallant few who thunders ahead, you would actually find a whole different story, to which, I guess, only the plucky are deserving: "In the [USA Today/Gallup] survey, taken Thursday through Saturday, 47% of Clinton supporters say they are solidly behind Obama, and 23% say they support him but may change their minds before the election. Thirty percent say they will vote for Republican John McCain, someone else or no one at all."

Whoa. Now that's not quite the "fewer than half" tone presented in the opening segments, which is, as students of journalism know, as far as most readers get. No, suddenly we find that it's actually 70 percent of Clinton supporters who now back Obama, although a minority adds the reasonable proviso that they "may change their minds before the election." Yes, and John McCain may decide before then that he wants Prof. Ward Churchill on the Supreme Court, is just wild about socialized health care, and is giving all of Cindy's hooch-loot to the DCCC.

So fundamentally, in the real world the number of former Clinton supporters who are presently Obama supporters is roughly three out of four. Perhaps even more; the current polls on the doggedly disaffected are less than stable, just like the doggedly disaffected.

The Guardian's columnist/editor Michael Tomasky, for instance, yesterday cited [2] a 20-percent figure for those who "still say they're planning to vote for McCain" (whether this number includes possible stay-at-homers, as the USA poll did, I don't know), commenting with blistering lucidity that "this is childish and ignorant beyond belief…. In a more just world, Obama would be able to stand at that podium and say: 'Are you people nuts? You're going to vote for a man who'll appoint supreme court judges who'll outlaw abortion rights because you're mad at me and Howard Dean?'"

Nevertheless, whatever the glissando statistic actually is -- 20 percent, 30 percent, or anything in between -- the number is still pre-convention, pre-Hillary's speech, pre-Bill's speech, pre-roll-call vote, pre-presidential debates, pre-pretty-much-everything that is likely to make a profound difference to conscientious (a key adjective), diehard Hillary supporters well before November rolls around.

The more they learn about McCain (turns out, for example, that the Hillary supporter now appearing in a McCain television ad didn't know he opposes Roe v. Wade), the more they'll begin to belch, O Sweet Mary Mother of God, do I really want to help put another menacingly halfwitted George W. Bush in office?

As Gov. Ed Rendell told USA Today: "I know a lot of hardened Clinton delegates who are going to be OK, they're going to wind up supporting Sen. Obama. But they want to cast their votes for her…. I think that'll make it easier for there to be closure."

I've never been a big believer in the sentimental, psychobabblish goo of "closure," but here the good governor is probably on to something. Let the Clintons speak, let the symbolic vote take place and all that, and then, Hillary's universe of lay voters should swiftly begin to conform attitudinally to Hillary's delegates, who were, it just so happens, themselves recently polled by New York Times/CBS News [3].

"More than half of the delegates that Mrs. Clinton won in the primaries now say they are enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Obama…, the poll found. Three in 10 say they support Mr. Obama but have reservations about him…. Five percent say they do not support him yet."

Yet. And they may never support him. And who knows what the final statistical tally of Hillary's recalcitrant supporters will be overall. Maybe the same five percent. Maybe less, maybe more. There is, of course, absolutely no way of knowing right now. But, as I have before, one thing I can guarantee you with absolute certainty: the media will cast the ever-diminishing number of rabidly anti-Obama Hillaryites as a swarming, even lethally antagonistic horde. It makes for great copy.

In the meantime, is it incumbent on us to pamper and coddle and woo this ultimately recalcitrant crowd? I don't know about you, but it isn't on me. For they are beyond hope; they are, as Rachel Maddow called them last night on MSNBC, "post-rational" -- and "no," she then snapped at Pat Buchanan, "I'm not trying to 'win them over,' but I am winning this argument." It was a hoot.

If, however, you'd prefer an argosy of counterfeit sympathy for Hillary's dead-enders, just flip over to FOX/RNC News some evening this week; because, as I also discovered last night, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity could not be any sadder or more upset about their misfortunes. And that was even more of a hoot.