Diane Feinstein is wavering, wants to know what Hillary's "game plan" is

After Obama's fantastic night last night, blowing out Clinton in North Carolina by 14 points, and keeping Hillary's margin of victory under 2 points in Indiana, I wondered if a floodgate of Super D's would be coming out for Obama.  Well, last night David Axelrod poured some cold water on that, talking about how May 20th was the day to watch.  Although some of the uncommitted supers have come out for Obama today, there are now two setbacks for Clinton that are more significant.  One, was George McGovern (not a superdelegate, but still a significant name) flipping to Obama.  And now this news coming from Diane Feinstein.  She wants to meet with Clinton and be told how in the heck Clinton can win this thing.

The Hill reported it like this:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) most prominent Senate supporters, said Wednesday that she will ask the former first lady to detail her plans for the rest of the Democratic primary.

"I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Sen. Clinton and I’m very loyal to her," Feinstein said. "Having said that, I’d like to talk with her and [get] her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is."

A very gentle way of putting it, but devastating to the Clinton campaign nevertheless.  Senator Feinstein has taken the unfortunate step of doing The Math, and is asking if Hillary has any advanced calculus to teach her to make the numbers move in any other direction than Obama's.

But she doesn't stop there.  She states the risk of this continuing longer than it should:

"I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party," Feinstein said. "I think we need to prevent that as much as we can."

This is a huge admission from a major Clinton supporter.  It also points to something, that many of us have not considered:  that it will not be uncommitted superdelegates that stop this primary, but Clinton superdelegates.  I think the Obama campaign is playing this brilliantly:  they are sticking to the pledged delegate account and Obama winning the majority on May 20th in Oregon.  They are exacting no pressure on Clinton to drop out, at least outwardly.  It is very possible that Clinton supporters will be the one to shut down this nominating process.  We will soon find out in the next weeks.