The Gab Fest comes in for a corkscrew landing.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Friday, March 28, 2008, I'm Dale Wilman.

David is out this week, but Will Salatin joins John and Emily for the day's festivities.

On this week's agenda, can Hillary win?

It's the never-ending question.

Also, faulty memory on the campaign trail, and it's the 10th anniversary of Viagra.

And now, to introduce the discussion, here's John.

Hello, and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.

I'm John Dickerson, here with Emily Bazelon, and special special guest Will Salatan, who is sitting in for David Plotz, who's in his first week of therapy.

And is in mourning that he is missing this and that Will is going to toast him. Yes. And so when I toast people, they tend to get elected president, so that's fine.

And so you can figure out which of the three characters running for president this week are going to be elected.

Will Salazar writes, Our Human Nature, column and blog. And I'm going to start with you, Will, by saying, let's see, where should we start with the Democratic race this week?

I guess we'll start with this idea, which is that we have known for six weeks or more, arguably two months, that Hillary Clinton couldn't catch Barack Obama in the elected delegates, the pledged delegates.

But this week, there's been just a kind of a new surge of this notion. Nope, she can't win.

There's no possible way. Where are you? Where do you stand on this? We've endlessly debated this here for the last two months. We're dying for a little fresh perspective. Well, I mean, as an last election cycle, I was covering politics. And so I had an inside perspective. Now I have kind of an outside perspective. So here's what it looks like to me as an outsider.

It looks like the reality is that the race is over, unless Hillary Clinton runs up ridiculous margins in the remaining states. And that reality is clashing with the behavior of the press corps, which is we have to have a story. So we're just going to make it sound like there's something to talk about. The reporters know this, and then they're sort of fighting with each other and within themselves over what to say about it. I mean, we've been fighting about it here. It's late, too. I wouldn't frame it quite that way because I also think this week was when we found out there wasn't going to be a do-over in Florida and Michigan. So that meant it was highly unlikely that she would catch Obama in the popular vote, which doesn't matter technically, but matters, you know, metaphorically.

And then the other thing is that he isn't going to win decisively.

And I feel like that is the stumbling block for maybe it's just a conceit to keep the story going.

But I think it truly is a problem for the party that a lot of people are grappling with, honestly.

I would agree with Emily.

Because for this reason, one, most of us who's covered the race, if I had to do it full time, we'd be happy if it were over.

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