There are 549 pledged delegates yet to be won in the remaining primaries, if you don't count Michigan and Florida. Currently, Obama has 1392 delegates and Clinton has 1236. If that's correct, then Obama needs only 197 more pledged delegates (35.8%) to Hillary's 352 (64.1%) to be permanently in the lead, and there's nothing Hillary can do to overtake him. Even in the worst-case scenario, that would occur in Kentucky on May 20, and it will probably happen much sooner. A permanent pledged delegate lead wouldn't be the whole story, of course, considering superdelegates, Florida/Michigan, and not to mention the whole atmosphere of corruption surrounding the process, but that will certainly be a milestone to look forward to.
If we include Florida and Michigan -- and, folks, I wish you'd been more worried about all this back in January -- then the total delegates would be 913, and the magic number climbs to 354 (38.7%) to Hillary's 559 (61.2%).
Any way you slice it, the numbers for Hillary are pretty overwhelming. You might even say it's pointless for her to continue under these conditions. Even if Michigan and Florida re-vote, and she maintains her superdelegate lead, she would have to average 60% wins the rest of the way, and that's not reasonable to expect. Barring the unexpected, we're going to have to put up with this for another couple of months, though, I'm afraid. But once the lead is permanent, and assuming Obama has been doing no worse than expected, that's going to be a pretty tough argument to counter. If Obama just holds his own in Pennsylvania, and does as well as I think he will in Mississippi, North Carolina and Indiana, at that point I just don't think Hillary has any argument to make given these numbers, even if you complicate things by holding do-overs. That's only about 8 weeks away, and that will make any marginal victory Hillary pulls off in Pennsylvania essentially meaningless within two weeks of that primary.
Whew! I'm tired. But I'm ready to make a prediction. Eight weeks from Tuesday, May 6, 2008, is officially the first day of the 2008 Presidential Campaign!
Yes we can!
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