The results last night from North Carolina and Indiana were not the decisive double whammy that Democratic superdelegates were hoping for. Like the epic mud-splattered battles of World War I, the dawn has disclosed little change to the war torn landscape and little advance on either side.

It seems that Barack Obama has survived the suicide mission of his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And Hillary Clinton’s reinvention as Roseanne Barr, the no nonsense working woman next door, has failed to make enough difference. Yet Mr. Obama still did not manage to close the deal and Mrs. Clinton lives to fight another day.

Demographics continue to dictate the results of the Democratic race. Last night Mr. Obama overwhelmingly won among African-Americans, young people, and well educated liberals; Mrs. Clinton took white blue-collar workers, women, and those aged over 40.

On that reckoning, we can deduce the results of the outstanding races. White, less educated voters in West Virginia next Tuesday and in Kentucky the following week will give Mrs. Clinton a boost. Mr. Obama will benefit from the West Coast liberalism of Oregon on May 20 and he is likely to win Montana and South Dakota on June 3. The Hispanic voters in Puerto Rico will likely overwhelmingly back Mrs. Clinton.

Whatever happens in the ballot box and however the outstanding 400 state delegates are subsequently divided, Mrs. Clinton cannot now overtake Mr. Obama in elected delegates.

So, now it is over to the boys in the back room, the 276 superdelegates who have yet to declare. These party bigwigs find themselves in the position of having to make an invidious decision. They now have two choices. They must either go with the flow and back the first African-American presidential candidate since Frederick Douglass, in the hope that come November the climate of change and the legacy of George W. Bush will prove so hard to resist that no amount of swiftboating and endless reruns of Jeremiah Wright’s Greatest Rants will defeat him, or they must listen to their hard hearts.

What the exit polls last night confirmed was that while Mr. Obama’s supporters would largely back Mrs. Clinton if their champion were to lose the nomination, half of her white blue-collar workers would switch to Senator McCain at the general election rather than vote for an African-American. If Mr. Obama cannot win white voters, he cannot win the White House.

Not for the first time, Democrats would allow their hearts to overrule their heads in the distant hope that human nature will turn out to be as they wish rather than as it is, but Mrs. Clinton will not give up easily. Encouraged by her husband, she will try to keep the fight going through the outstanding states and will send her surrogates into the labyrinth of the Democratic rules committee on May 31 that has been called to decide what to do about the disallowed primaries of Florida and Michigan. Anything, if she thought she could win the nomination.

No Democratic figure is large enough to halt the Clintons in their tracks. The Party chairman, Governor Dean, each day displays the extent of his impotence. As declared Obama supporters, old hands like Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, and President Carter are too partisan to be persuasive. Even the intervention of John Edwards, who has 19 delegates at his disposal, would not do the trick.

One ruse, however, might bring the bruising internecine battle to an end. The Obama campaign, preferably without the direct consent of Mr. Obama, could line up a large group of superdelegates, perhaps 20 of them, to say some time today that the will of the party is clear and that nothing is to be gained by testing the constitution to destruction.

Tomorrow a larger group of different Obama superdelegates could also combine to demand an armistice. On Friday, a further group of superdelegates backing Mr. Obama could dominate the news cycle in the name of party unity and victory in November. And so on.

The Clintons are hard to embarrass, heaven knows, but if Mrs. Clinton is to unite the party around an attempt to defeat what may well be President McCain’s reelection bid in 2012, she might listen to reason. She would do well to accept defeat with grace rather than burn her bridges with future supporters. It will be a tough decision, but she can expect to survive the ordeal and ultimately be vindicated.

If no such move is made by the Obama camp and Mrs. Clinton presses on, we shall witness a divided convention in Denver the likes of which has not been seen since secret deals between back room boys went the way of smoke filled rooms. Not since movies were black and white have we seen such a spectacle. Mrs. Clinton, who finally found her feet in the blue collar bars of Pennsylvania and Indiana, might appear as Marlene Dietrich, singing in deadpan, “See what the boys in the back room will have,/And tell them I’m having the same.”

nwapshott@nysun.com