More on Hillary’s swan song (MORE: TERRY MCAULIFFE DENIES AP REPORT)

The evidence is stacking up that we’ll be seeing a swan song of sorts from Hillary Clinton tonight:

WASHINGTON –Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.

Obama is 40 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, but he is widely expected to make up the difference Tuesday with superdelegate support and votes in South Dakota and Montana. Once he reaches the magic number of 2,118, Clinton will acknowledge that he has secured the necessary delegates to be the nominee.

The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City.

She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over.

Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.

Bill Bennett calls the fall of the Clintons an “astounding moment in American politics”:

You cannot credibly say the Clintons are a political dynasty the way, say, the Kennedys or Bushs are. But I think one has to say the Clinton rule of the Democratic party has been dynastic. Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have served two terms as president in two generations, the only Democrat to twice beat Republican nominees for president and his wife is a two term U.S. senator who will likely be in the Senate for years to come. Bill Clinton has been rated one of — if not THE — most popular person in the world, and yet Clinton rule in American politics ends tonight. Whatever it was the Republicans and so many independents did not like about the Clintons, we’ve learned the Democrats have had enough as well.

And thus the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate. The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976. Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him.

The Politico reports that a “tsunami” of superdelegates are expected to weigh in in support over Obama over the next 12 hours.

I haven’t put up today’s South Dakota/Montana primary post yet, but rest assured I’ll be blogging about all this later this afternoon and evening as events unfold.

Update 1 – 11:52 AM: The USA Today reports that Clinton’s campaign chair Terry McAuliffe is denying she’ll be conceding the delegate race:

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials told the Associated Press, but Clinton’s campaign manager denied the report.

The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City, said the officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.

However Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman, told CNN that AP is “100% reporting incorrectly.”

“I don’t know who the officials are, but anyone can be an official in this world. I can unequivocally say as chairman of this campaign that until someone has the numbers this nomination fight continues on,” he said. “The race goes on,” he added.

Clinton senior advisor Harold Ickes, who claimed this past Saturday at DNC RBC meeting on FL and MI that Hillary was “reserving” her right to take this to the credentials committee at the convention, said on MSNBC this morning that it “could” be over by Thursday.

Stay tuned …