The excellent columnist Robert Novak wrote a fine piece a couple weeks back entitled “Who will tell Hillary?” He discussed whether Senator Clinton would realize that her campaign is done if she lost Texas or Ohio. Well, she lost neither state, but some people are still insistent on telling her that it’s over anyway.

Take Slate’s John Dickerson, for example. Saying that this nominating process has become about statistics and that “The numbers are on Barack Obama’s side,” Dickerson obviously enjoys showing his ignorance about the meaning of Senator Clinton’s candidacy.

Of course the numbers are on Barack Obama’s side. But honestly, given that he can’t win the nomination without superdelegates or Hillary’s withdrawal, the numbers do not favor him as greatly as one might be lead to believe.

Mrs. Clinton’s only disadvantage is that she needs a couple of landslides or many strong wins to capture the remaining delegates up for grabs. Obama will make that difficult, and the superdelegates might just follow whoever has the lead among these and ergo, the popular vote. But really, why is everyone out to demean Hillary’s efforts?

It is folly to think that she should pull a Romney and sacrifice for her party – that was a different situation. The elephants were lagging in the polls and needed to rally and unify the base.

There’s no need to rally the Democrats – in fact, the extended primary season seems to be doing most of it for them. The longer the public mistakenly thinks that the Democratic nominating process is as important as the general election, the longer the liberals have an edge.

So why the attacks? Well, many are afraid she might keep fighting at the convention even if she loses the popular vote. However, if a candidacy is representative of a larger idea, than there is nothing wrong with a prolonged campaign.

The problem with some reporters right now is that they view the Hillary and Obama candidacies as nearly equivalent. If the ideas are truly the same, why would Hillary trudge on? The popular perception among the punditry is that Mrs. Clinton is obsessed with glory.

But what glory is found in a campaign stretched out too long? The glory-obsessed know that there is no glory in this, and thus, they resign when the odds are against them. Yet Senator Clinton fights on.

So one must find an idea in the Clinton campaign that still rallies the troops, and one does not have to look far. One purpose of her campaign is now to prove that ideas matter.

Obama does not center his campaign around any new ideas. Yes, he’ll focus on his “new politics,” “change” and “hope.” But he never elaborates on these vague concepts regarding political conduct. Here’s the facts:

Change is meaningless if the change does not have new direction. Obama’s direction is the tried and true liberal path of change (see his U.S. Senate record). Really, he should come up with new liberal ideas. If he can’t do this, he should at least pull a Hillary and give forceful and detailed policy prescriptions.

Such prescriptions are ideas. Repeating the word change is not an idea.

Hopes are meaningless if the hopes are ill-specified. Not all hope is good. One can hope for very evil things. Although Obama does not hope for evil, he does not specify his dreams. Hope for . change? Well, now we’re back at square one. No ideas here, either.

New political conduct is meaningless if it does not result in new political thought, and given Obama’s track record, it clearly hasn’t and won’t. An extra smile to your political opponents won’t get the job done any better.

Thus, the purpose of Clinton’s campaign has become simple, yet dignified. It is to stand in the way of meaningless rhetoric yelling, “Wait, policy matters. Ideas matter!!!” Americans are generally receptive to this line of thought.

And if Hillary mistakenly sacrifices this noble purpose for her party’s wishes, a certain Republican senator from Arizona will be most delighted to pick up the mantle of substantive discourse — a mantle that could win him the election.

Dan is a sophomore in political science who is a very happy McCainiac.