Sen. Obama has secured an absolute majority of the pledged delegates under the current DNC rules.
Now comes the part where Camp Clinton further waves the popular vote flag until June. Continuous moving of the goalposts seems the order of the day over there. It sort of reminds me of another failed campaign by someone who is already President. Every day it is a different metric. More delegates from big states. More delegates from Blue states. More delegates from swing states. More votes from uneducated people. Every day a new metric that is usually quickly attained by the Obama campaign if not proved to be ridiculous by anyone who is paying attention. All she has left is the chance of a popular vote victory, and hoping that is enough to pull a very large margin of superdelegates to her column.
I definitely noticed her use of “top of the ticket” during her speech tonight. I think that was certainly hinting at the democrats having to give her something… It was almost an implication that the ticket is already decided and it is only a question of who is on top. We’ve been through this before though, with Sen. Clinton talking about making Sen. Obama her running mate on basically a “vote for me and get him too,” platform… Sen. Obama nipped that in the bud pointing out the fallacy in talking about who your VP candidate should be when you’re behind in the nomination!
Basically, Sen. Clinton’s only remaining shot at this is convincing an overwhelming majority of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to swing her way based on a marginal popular vote lead including two states that may or may not have their full delegations seated and a likely convincing victory in one “state” that doesn’t even vote in the general election.
That’s a real strong case… if you’re living in Hillaryland.
Now, you can argue that a scenario where the popular vote winner doesn’t earn the nomination is exactly the same as the scenario I railed against in 2000 where the popular vote winner wasn’t elected President. I’d be inclined to agree in most cases. However in this case, Sen. Clinton’s popular vote lead thus far includes two states that were not a part of the campaign strategy for either candidate. In fact, it includes one state where Sen. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot! I don’t think you can look at that scenario and see a strong case for Sen. Clinton to sway the remaining superdelegates.
The question now is; Who will Sen. Obama pull out of his hat tomorrow to negate the news cycle of Sen. Clinton’s big win in Kentucky? Al Gore — I’m looking at you.
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