Hillary Clinton is being asked - no, told - by party elders, pundits and people who say they care about their country, to quit the quest of a lifetime: to stop raining on Barack Obama's presidential parade, the Democratic Party and even democracy itself.

By yesterday, as the superdelegate tally reflected either a tie or Obama in the lead, Senator Clinton's last "I can do this" weapon was steadily slipping away from her.

Yet there she was, glad-handing at a Mother's Day "celebration" in West Virginia with her daughter Chelsea at her side, perhaps offering one clue to her emotional stamina: As Gail Collins wrote in The New York Times, the embattled senator is privately saying "she does not intend to go home and tell Chelsea that she's a quitter."

It's true that one of the most heart-tugging images in this campaign has involved Chelsea Clinton - not the way Ms. Clinton has stumped for her mother (that's expected), but the way she looks at her with genuine devotion and adoration. As every mother knows, that look is hard to come by.

Meanwhile, practically everyone else is treating Senator Clinton like the madwoman in the attic, someone who, as Obama supporter Senator Chris Dodd said in overtly soothing tones on Meet The Press, should be given "a chance to breathe, to settle down, to recognize what's going on here. She'll make the right choice." You got the feeling they were really thinking she might have to be tasered.

Instead, like Jennifer Hudson's badly behaved, ferociously talented, wounded-in-love Effie in the movie Dreamgirls, Hillary is singing a defiant song: "And I am telling you I'm not going. ..."

In fact the lyrics of that spine-tingling anthem of fury in the face of rejection seem made for Hillary Clinton. Just as Effie pleads with her manager and lover, Hillary is pleading with voters, backers and superdelegates alike: "We're part of the same place/We're part of the same time/We both share the same blood/We both have the same mind. ..."

Never mind that the consensus in almost every media corner, even given her expected win tomorrow in the West Virginia primary, is that from here on in, "it's all about her exit strategy." Or as yet another headline summed up succinctly: "Out of money, math and momentum."

Defeated politicians usually resort to the standard, but somehow always thrilling, four-word acceptance of the reality of the ballot box: "The people have spoken."

But not Hillary: With her own personal fuzzy calculator that keeps punching up numbers no one else can see, she is pressing on, as she said - sounding as demonic as Captain Queeg in Mutiny on the Bounty - "full speed to the White House."

In her dreams, say not just the Hillary haters, but even some of her own team. They seem embarrassed by her lack of shame, her refusal to take no, although truly what else is possible from a woman who held her head indomitably high in the face of a philandering president husband, impeachment and details so nauseating most women would have fled the country.

Folks in the spectator seats can't figure out whether it's entitlement or tone deafness that keeps Hillary Clinton going these days. Some even think she's staying in to "muscle" her way onto the ticket as vice-president.

But I think it's the stubborn belief - however much a slim majority of delegates beg to differ - that she truly would make the best president.

At a party recently, middle-aged women buttonholed me to talk Hillary with a passion: "She's a warrior," insisted one of them. "This is what warriors do." Yet there's also growing anger over Senator Clinton's race-baiting tactics, pointedly referring to the "white Americans" who would rather vote for her.

Obama is, of course, the ultimate game changer, a man who, if elected president, would reinvent the conversation in every household in America and enable each black child to see himself differently. ("Who's that?" the child would ask, staring at the television. "That's the president.") How do you top that for America feeling good about itself?

With a 71-year-old man who thinks it's okay to hang around in Iraq for another few decades? I don't think so.

With a 60-year-old woman who comes close - but not, it seems, close enough - to being the bold and exhilarating female leader of her generation?

Only in our dreams, I guess. And only in the song: "Tear down the mountains. Yell, scream and shout. And you can say what you want, I'm not walking out. ... I'm staying, I'm staying. And you, and you, and you, you're gonna love me. ..."

By JUDITH TIMSON, Globe and Mail, May 12, 2008