The hearse is waiting outside

There's room for another casket.  The one already in the back is ... little.

Clinton’s victories in Ohio, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina put her firmly on course to defeat her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As the results were announced on Tuesday evening, she took the stage before a boisterous crowd of supporters here and seemed to pivot towards the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, who also won in Florida.

“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November!” Clinton declared.

No polling versus reality shockers to be had on this night.

It looked as if Sanders might prove the Clinton campaign’s bullish prediction wrong after he won a stunning upset in Michigan on March 8, but Clinton’s victories on Tuesday helped her stop Sanders’ momentum and establish a seemingly unbeatable lead.

Though Clinton was expected to win the primaries in North Carolina and Florida on Tuesday, polls showed her potentially losing in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Illinois. Even if Sanders had won all of the states that were in play on Tuesday, he would still have faced an uphill battle. However, by taking Ohio and Illinois, Clinton definitively pulled ahead.

Elsewhere, the mood was more that of a wake.

Sanders took the stage shortly after Clinton’s appearance in Florida and addressed more than 7,000 of his cheering supporters in a convention center in Phoenix with his usual stump speech. The 74-year-old senator mentioned raising the minimum wage, getting money out of politics, fixing free trade deals and reforming the criminal justice system, among other typical stump-speech issues.

What Sanders didn’t mention were the five states that voted in the Democratic primaries Tuesday night, and what the results meant for his viability as a candidate. This was in contrast to Sanders’ election night appearance on Super Tuesday, when he explicitly downplayed his mixed showing and reassured his supporters he would take the fight to “every” state. In contrast with most election night gatherings, there were no TVs showing primary results in Phoenix, so Sanders’ supporters were not shown Clinton’s wins racking up in the background as the evening progressed. Arizona’s Democrats vote next Tuesday, and Sanders is expected to do well in the state.

Thanks again, corporate media.

No major cable network carried his speech, which coincided with Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s remarks and later, as Sanders continued speaking, with Donald Trump’s victory speech.

So we wait a bit longer for Team Sanders to wake up and smell the coffee, bust a move, and instruct his support network which way to go.  If you know any Sanders people, you already know that they're considering all options.  Since so many of them aren't Democrats -- like Sanders himself, allegedly -- we should expect to see wholesale defections among the blue ranks as Clinton turns her battleship to the right and steams ahead for the fall.  And there ought to be plenty of Republicans for them to recruit.

That's the only interesting storyline left to unfold (as far as I'm concerned): post-Sanders, how do the Democrats plan, go, and do in the general.  They may have been gifted with another Goldwater ... or perhaps will deliver us the nation's worst nightmare.  There's a bitter pill the #NeverTrumps have to swallow.  Will they?

Some Democrats say it's just like 2008 and  Hillary's PUMAs: everybody will get over their upset and fall in line, get onboard.  Eventually.  By November.

I'll just be glad to get to blogging about some things beside the presidentials every day after the past two months.