I heard someone say that she'd have to win 57% of the remaining votes to win. She hasn't shown that kind of strength in any of her wins to date, has she? I think the clock is ticking .....

Just checking a trend here, I know Obama has won the last 8 in a row. But has anyone else noticed that Hillary has not cracked 40% since super tuesday.

Also, why doesn't the DNC release the delagate totals, each network has thier own number.

I think if it comes down to the superdelagates and they reverse the popular results and side with clinton, there will be a huge letdown in Dem turnout along with a 60 day window to mount a national campaign. Looks like the only way McCain can win.

If the Clintons really think that they can paper over a disparity of a couple of dozen pledged delegates without making the nomination not worth having, then they definitely inhaled and are still inhaling.

John King on CNN did a similar map scenario tonight showing that even if Obama wins ALL the remaining states 55-45, that still wouldn't be enough pledged delegates for him to reach 2025.

It seems very likely to come down to the super delegates unless there are more major 20+ point blowouts like tonight (for one or the other).

I just made up a little Excel spreadsheet of the remaining contests, and it looks like HRC will need to win 55-56% of all of the remaining pledged delegates to match Obama's pledged delegate count.

Wasn't the buzz that the superdelegates were waiting to see who wins the pledged delegate count?

I don't think Senator Clinton will win either Ohio or Texas. Unfortunately Senator Clinton's time arrived at the same time as Senator Obama's time. She should bow out while she still has good will. President Clinton can then divorce Bush the Moldier and the Clinton's can work their charitable magic around the world.

They would need to carry roughly 56% of the delegates to come within 30 pledged delegates of Obama (O 469 / C 606).

These margins are only going to get steeper next week, because it's a good bet that they are not going to make 56% in HI or WI. And when you start substracting places like MS and SD, which are obviously not Clinton country, it ends up meaning that they have to carry TX, OH, PA, as well as IN and in fact all the rest of the outstanding states, by margins parallel to Obama's VA margin tonight.

So, to begin with, Fineman is right that this is unlikely.

Next question: would coming within "twenty or thirty" pledged delegates actually permit them to carry the nomination with superdelegates plus the dreaded MI & FL argument?

Well, look. I'm a poor excuse for an activist. But I can tell you that if they try a stunt like that, I'm gonna show up in Denver carrying an angry sign, and bring a bunch of friends with me. And I'm definitely at the phlegmatic end of the Democratic spectrum. So, no, they can't do that. It would destroy the party and destroy our chances in the general election.

Which means that it's going to be time to drop out fairly soon -- certainly by early March.

We're also all assuming here that superdelegates will favor HRC overall. But this analysis disagrees: http://ccpsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/predicting-who-democratic.html

Not sure if it's true or not, but the theory is that HRC has already gotten the "low-hanging fruit" superdelegates, and that more of those still left to declare will break for Obama. Plenty of those still out there...

it's all going to hinge on puerto rico!
i wonder if there are any tv ads playing there yet?

If there's anything we've learned, it's that anything is possible in this race. But Obama's haul HI and Wisconsin will have a lot to do with what's possible. If it puts her in a position where she needs to win 65% of the vote in PA/TX/OH/PR then I think she's done.

Someone needs to point out that a huge reason she's losing here is because she's Running a really poor campaign. This article in the Atlantic goes over the Heck of a Job Patti Solis Doyle actually performed, and how she was picked more for her loyalty then her skill.

Finally, the Dems Abroad primary ended tonight. Anyone know how their delegates are going to be apportioned?

Fineman's right. CNN ran out all remaining primaries using the Fancy Map set at a 55-45 delegate split first for Obama then for CLinton. Neither can take enough pledeged delegates

Yeah, I agree with fairandbalanced. It's gonna be ok. Once the superdelegates (and donors) see that HRC does not have a winning strategy that wouldn't also be a party-destroying strategy, there's going to be an intervention that brings this quietly to a close.

But it's important for the message to be delivered. In my opinion it would *not* be okay for HRC to come within thirty pledged delegates, use an edge among superdelegates to control the credentialing process, and then seat MI & FL in order claim a (retrospective) lead in pledged delegates.

That's clearly the scenario the Clinton campaign has in mind, and I'm not buying it as a legitimate end to this contest. Maybe it would have worked forty years ago, but that's not the kind of party we are in 2008.

So I very much appreciate TPM's offering us this thread to sketch out the possible end-games. Because if that's the only endgame HRC has on offer, I think the netroots could start politely indicating that it is not acceptable. A delegation of some sort from MI & FL can eventually be *seated*, but it cannot be used to determine the outcome of the election, when everyone agreed in advance that it wouldn't.

I think the real message in Fineman's piece is that the Hillary camp is hoping that they are "a couple dozen" pledged delegates behind when it's all done in June. That's how low their their hopes and expectations are. That implies two things, neither good for Camp Hillary. One, this is what will happen if pretty much everything goes how they want and hope it will, which is always a dicey proposition. Two, imagine you are working on the Hilary campaign, knowing the best you can hope for is a not-quite tie to go to the convention with. It's gotta be brutal.

This isn't my take because I have it in for Hillary. I don't. I admire her and her husband. Maybe she really can turn it around. But it is looking more challenging by the day.

My spreadsheet says Fineman's right. The only way Clinton comes close to Obama is by doing a 180 and stomping him by the same margins he's been generating (an avg of approx. 37 percentage points since Super Tuesday). This would be a neck-breaking turnaround of a sort that's hard to envision. Her average margin of victory to date has been around 14 percentage points -- and that's her BEST showings.

I'd say it's more likely her runs the table than she does. All said, the trend is not her friend.

Consider that Obama, with his money advantage and consistent (and subtly augmented) message, seems to be converting her base of low-information voters. What's more, voters are getting mixed messages from her campaign blunders. Whether it's fair or not to regard it as some sort of proxy for governing, these organizational missteps undermine Clinton's fundamental claim that she has the skill and experience to get things done. She denigrates Obama's management style, talks about staying on top of the bureaucracy, but is taken by surprise when her campaign runs through its record-breaking $100 million-plus war chest. She takes Obama to task for shirking fights then pulls a Giuliani, looking past and downplaying a string of defeats as his campaign scraps for every delegate in every contest. Like the delegate count, these things don't add up in her favor.

As for the second part of Clinton's increasingly desperate strategy, twisting superdelegates' arms...Without the White House in hand, what do the Clintons have to bargain with? What stick? What carrot? If I were an elected official, I'd be measuring the candidates' coattails, and Obama's would appear the better bet. Party officials? I'd wager they follow the pack.

And the justification for the superdelegates supporting a candidate who was "a couple dozen" elected delegates behind would be what?

The Democratic Party isn't going to destroy itself by making a mockery of the popular vote in this way. Bill Clinton may be influential but he's not Svengali. It's just not going to happen.

I think the corollary of these calculations is that this thing could be over sooner than we think.

Suppose next week's contests in WI and HI break 50/50, taking them out of the equation. At that point, there are only 981 delegates left in the race. If Hillary won 56% of those remaining delegates (pretty optimistic, given that NC, MS are included in the total) she would only be able to make up 120 delegates of the deficit she's now running. If it's true that Obama currently has a lead of roughly 165 pledged delegates, this means she would no longer be able to come "within twenty or thirty."

I think this means that Obama can put this thing away next week, if he picks up a substantial handful of delegates. If I were Team Clinton, I would do some campaigning in Wisconsin, instead of camping out in Texas.

I think this is definitely the beginning of the end
Wisconsin and Hawaii are next both are going to go big for Obama.

meanwhile HRC will see her Ohio and Texas leads melt away --

This thing is over Wednesday Morning
March 5th

great thread

what seems underplayed here is the fact that the Clinton camp has itself said it will never catch up to Obama's pledged delegate total--a significant and devastating admission.

once that admission reverberates in the media and through her campaign, there will be a slow but steady (or maybe fast and precipitous?) drop in morale as well as cash.

that "little red button" mentioned a few posts above might indeed have just popped out ...

Complexities complexities.

This is based on Wikipedia tables because they give the total map, not because I assume their delegate counts are best. But whose are?

Excluding Florida and Michigan, a tie +1 comes at 55.8% of the remaining pledged delegates for Hillary. That includes the 80 odd still unassigned pledge-delegates from past races (likely they are assigned but wikipedia hasn't pinpointed them yet). It does not include the 26 Edwards delegates who are for all practical purposes unassigned at this point, but if we treat them as unassigned it reduces that number from 55.8% to 55.6%.

She has carried 7 states with 55.6% or better. There is no chance she will overcome that deficit.

Moving to Florida and Michigan is a bit tricky. She got 55% in Michigan and 50% in Florida. Little chance she is going to improve on these, but let's do the following. We will give Obama the remaining 45% for Michigan (how he gets them, I don't know, but he'll get at least them, somehow) and the 33% he got for Florida. The remaining (Edwards) Florida delegates go to unassigned. Now Clinton needs 53.8% for a tie +1. Toss in Edwards delegates and that drops to 53.6%.

As a practical matter, she carried 10 states with more than 53% of the vote. She has to carry ALL the rest with this share. Keep in mind, she is going to keep losing next week. She cannot overcome that deficit.

That leaves her trying to steal the nomination with backroom deals with OLD STYLE PARTY REGULAR Delegates.

Neither of them can win outright, Obama needs 79% of the rest of the pledged delegates and Clinton needs 91%.

I think Howard Dean will keep a lid on this. My faith in him is not misplaced, though this will be a hell of a test for him. I expect that pretty soon, he will make a decision about how to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates. My guess: A caucus for MI and a national-proportional representation of delegates from Florida. Both of those will be net Obama wins.

I hope Dean announces this soon, so people don't have to keep wondering. This issue has to be settled first before all the suspicions and flames die down. And I think that this might over before April, because once the Michigan and Florida issue is ironed out, the uncommitted superdelegates will see the writing on the wall and settle this for Obama, with the help of 46 delegates pledged to Edwards.

Dean is right: This shouldn't drag on past the point when the winner is clear. I think there's a good chance that this will be in March.

Happy Warrior-Czar.

lump1: Can Dean do that on his own, or must he wait for the Credentials Committee? And do they convene at any point before the Convention?

The Call of the DNC contains all the rules that apply to the current situation re, MI and FL.

The Rules, Credentials and Platform Committees are made up of delegates selected by the State Delegations, 2 for each state, 1 for Territories, DC, Americans Abroad, etc. Thus the membership of these convention committees will not be set till all delegations are firmed up (mid-June) and they can caucus and select. Whoever controls each state delegation probably calls the choice.

The Credentials Committee would receive a petition to seat, and would then call a hearing, and eventually enter a Majority Report. If 25% disagree with the report, a Minority Report is filed. It then goes to the Convention Floor for debate and vote, Minority Report first. Decision by the convention is final.

You can circumvent the Committee Report system by filing a petition signed by 40% of Seated delegates, and go directly to the floor for debate and a vote. In neither process would MI or FL vote on their own credentials.

So aside from having a nasty floor fight the first day of the convention, what else can be done?

It really depends on the State Central Committees in MI and in Florida. They need to petition the DNC for permission to do-over the delegate selection process, and submit a plan that follows the rules applicable to 2008, again in The Call.

Thus the DNC can only act on this if asked to by the State Central Committees. I would rather suspect that Howard Dean and his staff are making efforts to get these party bodies to get the lead out and petition -- it certainly is in his interests and the DNC's generally to solve this without a huge floor fight -- but the DNC is the actual party body between conventions, they made their rules, and they have a duty to enforce them. Florida and Michigan intentionally broke the rule on the window for delegate selection -- and you are not entitled to run a bulldozer down the middle of Party Rules just cause you don't like them. So, in essence, they have to admit they were wrong by petitioning for a new selection process.

If FL and MI get seated and their delegates get to vote without there being another form of election, I'm bailing on this party forever. There would be nothing left to trust, and in this single act, the DNC will have proved right every aspersion cast by the GOP in the last half century. I won't support a party so corrupt.

Fortunately, I don't see that happening. HRC's campaign is looking a lot like Rudy's at this point. There's something to be said for momentum. One thing Fineman got right recently is when he said that the longer Obama is in the race, the better he does. As people get to know him, as they see other voters supporting him, as more come out to endorse him and add legitimacy to his campaign, the more others will join in.

On that same note, as Don in Seattle said, there will at first be a trickle of superdelegate defectors from HRC to Obama, but then there will be a flood. This mirrors his campaign precisely, and it is exactly what was predicted over a year ago when I started volunteering.

What I think we are seeing here - and Wisconsin will be the final proof - is a tide of a new inevitability. Not one manufactured, or bought, or brokered on false legacy promises, but one spawned by an idea of possibility, nurtured by hope and dedication, and allowed to grow and evolve organically.

Fruition is just around the corner!

A pretty important point is being missed here.

Hillary is definitely in big, big trouble, but you can't assume Obama is gonna somehow make up a 20 point deficit in Ohio or that he's suddenly gonna survive the hispanic vote in Texas or the elderly vote in Pennsylvania.

The fact is that the three biggest states left, the three ones everyone agrees Hillary needs a strong showing in, currently look very, very bad for Obama. He's down like 17 in the latest Survey USA poll of Ohio, and they've been the best polling operation by far this year.

I want Obama to win, but I'm not gonna convince myself that hundreds of thousands of people in a state halfway across the country from myself are gonna suddenly change their minds because they see Obama racking up victories.

We knew there was quite a bit of Republican cross-over voting for Obama, just not why there was:
http://robertbluey.com/blog/2008/02/12/why-i-voted-for-obama/

The floodgates have opened up for Obama and I think HRC and team are going to realize that it's over and that public sentiment on the issue of MI and FL will leave her dead in the water.

All of the strong supporters of Hillary are leaving her according to exit polls, so it's not an argument of disenfranchisement anymore.

It's not anything bad against the Clintons, hell we love em, it's just she can't compete with the message Obama is bringing now. The inspiration in his speeches and how can you argue with I'm a "HOPEMONGER"
The Clintons will bow down on this when it comes to that point. No worries. I would not even mind a Obama/Clinton ticket. She is one smart lady and will win any debate pitted against the right's VP choice.

Looks like her campaign is in deflation. She should have reached OUTSIDE her circle for an experienced campaign director and some heavyweight Democrat pols to serve as strategists.

It all smacks of rearranging the dech chairs on the Titanic.

So how should this affect the campaigns in the interim ? Logically they should call off the attack dogs.

For whoever's ahead , let's say Obama, every attack on HRCC costs a few Novemeber votes from HRC's supporters who'll resent this unnecessary humiliation. And may not win any superdelegates.
In fact depending on the particular attack might turn a few of them to HRC.

Since that's obvious, the candidate who
raises the termperature now is essentially
admitting he or she is behind.

As to the Florida , Michigan situation. However costly , I don't see how the DNC can avoid calling for a full primary.

Consider the alternatives:

oLeaving them disenfranchised apart from anything else will be a gift to McCain.

oHRC's supporters will prevent substituting caucuses.

o Just seating the existing delegates if that provides HRC with a winning margin will be seen as such an anti-Obama act that a large percentage of Black voters will be sufficiently outraged to stay home.

Dean should somehow arrange for a primary sooner rather than later. Altho that suggestion reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon: the bearded
mathemician has filled the black board with
equations and is pointing at one of them and
saying "here's where a miracle occurs".

If the supers are smart they will start swinging to Obama now and help him win the remaining primaries decisively. If Hilary manages to play this back to a near tie it will be very destructuve to the party to have the nominee picked by the super delegates.

I've never been a registered Democrat, and the party's potential to overthrow the will of the people with superdelegates and/or the seating of MI and FL doesn't exactly have me anxious to join.

Living in a closed-caucus state, I'm not so up on the process, but don't the precinct results still need to go through county and state conventions before they head to Denver? In a close race, with proportional allocation, could this make a difference?

As it becomes clear that McCain is the certain R nominee, and he begins to train attacks on Obama (as he did in his victory speech last night), I would expect the pressure from Democratic elders to avoid a "Rs are united; Ds still divided" narrative would become very intense, and calls to crown Obama quickly would become very widespread. I could imagine that pressure to become to strong to withstand before March 4, if (as I expect) poll numbers for Obama climb rapidly in Texas and Ohio. HRC dropping out before those contests would be seed as a great contribution to party unity.

But perhaps I'm underestimating the Clintons' tenacity and willingness to risk serious damage to the party. . .

Be carefull -- by implying that Obama has this wrapped up, you may end up hurting his chances in Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio and Penns. Folks won't bother to go vote.

Coonsey's View
www.freewebs.com/coonsey/

If one looks at Hillary's predicament purely from the numbers, of course, she can pull this out of the fire. But most of these otherwise excellent comments leave out two crucial factors: (1) her campaign team is undergoing chaotic change with a lot of internal bitterness, and (2) she needs a lot more money than she apparently has (one of the reasons for Solis being canned). She cannot squeeze much more out of her affluent donors, so she has to resort to online fund raising, and that may well explain a shakeup in the website team.

So she has a perfect storm of problems: (1) Obama momentum (real, not illusory), (2) a campaign team in chaos, and (3) severe funding problems, and most of all (4) she is running out of time.

Outcome: I would not be on Hillary pulling this off.

Right now it's a tsunami she's trying to ride out. An important indicator will be what the Ohio polls look like in, say, 3 or 4 days. The recent result had her up there by about 15 or so, if memory serves, a bit down from the 19 or 20 point margin she had earlier. If that or Texas polls start swinging heavily towards Obama, that will strongly suggest that the Obama tide is truly national in scope and not limited to states which are more demographically favorable to him.

On intuition I see three most likely scenarios, with my best guess probabilities as among these 3 attached:
1. She loses Wisconsin big, say, by 20 points, and pulls a bombshell by getting out of the race. 20% chance.
2. Her support continues to erode during the runup to Ohio and Texas. She loses both (probably by much smaller margins than of late, say 5 or 10 points) and announces within the next 48 hours that she is getting out and supporting Obama. 50% chance.
3. She bails water until Ohio and Texas, wins both by small margins, and stays on to fight.
30% chance.

Of course Ohio and Texas could go different ways.

BTW, EJ Dionne's suggestion on how to deal with the Florida and Michigan delegation seating mess is both the smart and the right one: have Howard Dean ask them right now to redo their primary/caucus prior to the convention. This sends the (quite true, I am sure) message that the DNC has never wanted to disenfranchise voters in those states but to the contrary welcomes their participation. But that that participation must be on a fair and level playing field. If the party leadership in either state opts not to do so--giving both candidates a chance to compete openly--then they are making their own statement.

American dreamer. Yeah, that's reasonable. The HRC
campaign will object that caucuses favor Obama,but
I don't see doing that as so infuriating her supporters that they'd want to punish in the general election.

It provides closure without the much greater expense, effort and disruption of a full primary.

I just counted up the remaining delegates up for grabs. They total 1312.

One question I have for the Clinton campaign:

If your strategy is to hold off until the March 4 contests, why so much staff shake-up now?

I.e., if everything's going according to plan, why are people losing their jobs?

It appears that Howerd Fimeman is largely correct.

The only way to demonstrate this with any precision is to crunch some numbers.

Let’s assume that NBC’s latest estimate of pledged delegates is correct: Obama 1078, Clinton 969.

This leaves aside all unpledged or super delegates as well as the delegations from Florida and Michigan.

Were Obama to win 50% of all the remaining pledged delegates from here until the end of the primary season here is how the final count would look like:

Obama would have 1681 PDs
Clinton would have 1546 PDs.

(I’m keeping Edwards with 26 PDs for now since we don’t know who he’ll endorse.)

Were Obama to win 45% of all remaining pledged delegates that would result in:
Obama 1621
Clinton 1606

However, if Obama were only to win 40% of the remaining PDs, then the result would be:
Clinton 1667
Obama 1560

Therefore, the question is how likely is it that Obama would not win at least 45% of all remaining pledged delegates?

It is worth emphasizing again, that these numbers do not take into account Edward’s small amount of delegates and more importantly the unresolved issue of Florida and Michigan, which deserve far more attention.

Is Fineman ever right? Here is Jerome Armstrong's take.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/13/81143/8416

Regarding the supers, I think the argument can be made that anyone who is going to back Clinton out of loyalty or political debt will have already done so. Unless she turns things around significantly, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that the majority of remaining supers will side with Obama. Certainly they will if he reaches the point where he can effectively guarantee the majority of pledged delegates. That point is approaching rapidly.

Obama supporter or not, it isn't hubris to just do the math. I did some calculations above, and it's simply undeniable that Obama is in a pretty good position to come out with more pledged delegates than Clinton. Now, maybe you don't like that some of those PDs were chosen in caucuses. I think I'd agree with you on the issue of caucusus vs. primaries. But that's besides the point, isn't it? It's how delegates are chosen in this election cycle. And based on the results so far, we can safely say that Obama will most likely end up with more PDs than Hillary (again, see the numbers in my post above).

So, you agree with this dipshit that John "Less Jobs, More Wars" McCain is really a strong candidate?

We'll see. I think you, Robert Bluey and Mark Penn are behind the curve on negative campaigning. I think the toxicity of anyone too closely associated with Washington negates the traditonal effectiveness of negative ads.

And Obama's been pretty good at spinning Clinton's dross into gold. I'm really not too worried about McCain at this point.

I'm more worried about Clinton going nuclear on the FL and MI questions, or attempting a superdelegate coup, than John McCain.

Billy, I grew up in Minnesota. I don't understand your point about Wisconsin Independents. Of all the candidates, McCain and Obama are the two who are generally identified as having the most independent and crossover appeal. Do you dispute that, or is there some special reason that fact should not apply in Wisconsin?

There is a point in a campaign where "surprise", or beating expectations, is a real factor. However, we are beyond that point now. The idea that the unpledged superdelegates are going to monolithically wait until April and Pennsylvania, before they begin to break decisively, is very unrealistic imo.

I said this after Super-Tuesday: barring an unbelievable collapse March 4th by Obama, it'll be over March 5th. Here's the reality the Clinton campaign has been facing, and that most are just waking up to now:

First, let's assume a rough lead for Obama of 130 pledged delegates after yesterday.

Now, let's look at states where he's (or should be) generally favored from here on out. IMO we have: HI, WI, VT, WY, MS, NC, OR, SD. Reasons: HI is a home state; WI has a history with liberal-reformers; VT is Howard Dean's home, v. liberal & anti-war and similar to CT; he's shown huge strength in the mountain-west and prairie regions, so WY and SD should be givens; MS and NC have high black populations; downstate Washington is a good predictor for OR, and he did quite well there. Obama def. seems to have more appeal to the west-coast style liberalism that we see in places like Seattle, Colorado, etc, so Oregon is kinda natural for him.

Assume he and Clinton split the total delegates in those states evenly...that is, in all the states where demographically or intuitively he should be favored, he doesn't gain a single delegate in his lead. That would leave available between now and the convention a total of 718 delegates available. For a 130 delegate advantage, then, Clinton would need to win 424 of those, to Obama's 294. That's a delegate share of 59.05% As others have noted, in order to win 59% of the delegates, you often have to either win in all the right places, or win with a lot more than 59% of the vote. As such, it's worth noting a couple things:

Obama, not Clinton, is poised to win all the right places in Texas (Houston and the surrounding Katy/Sugarland suburbs, Dallas/Fort Worth area) and has consistently shown superior organization for caucuses, which will be important since Texas requires intense caucus organization (over 18,000 across the state...which is pretty expensive to deal with). Those are huge hurdles to over come, and since Texas is the biggest prize between now and the convention, representing over a quarter of the 718 delegates mentioned above, winning by small margins there will be crippling to her. If Obama duels her to a draw there, or she only gets a slight edge (say 17...that's HRC winning 55% of pledged delegates), she'd need to win 61% (!) everywhere else in order to pull into a basic tied with Obama.

Even assuming that she somehow gets to her 59% delegate share in TX, the only states where she's won 59% of the delegate share so far are: Arkansas (77% in an uncontested election), New York (59% on the dot in her home state), Massachusetts (60%), and Oklahoma (63% in what was, I think, also somewhat of an uncontested election). So, she'd basically have to repeat her very-best performances, two of which came in her home states and one in an uncontested election, for every contest in which she's the nominal favorite from here on out.

And that's assuming Obama doesn't gain a single delegate advantage from any of the states in which he should be considered the favorite from here on out.

In short, it's over. Some might not accept that until Obama expands his lead even more on WI and HI, and then she fails to win 60% of the delegate share from TX and OH, but that's the way it is. In truth, Obama likely will reap big advantages from HI, WI, VT, WY, MS, etc etc, making Hillary's task even greater. The state I pegged as leaning Obama comprise a total of 307 delegates. That's a lot of ground for Obama to pick up even more delegate advantages. Hillary would win every other state by 60% in delegate share, and Obama only win those states by 55%, and he'd still end up with a ~30 delegate advantage. As we've seen, though, the trend is the opposite: when Hillary wins, it tends to be in the 50-55% range for delegate share, whereas Obama is the one who racks up big margins.

So, yeah. It's over. And I don't care if people think this comes off as smug, to be honest. That's the math, straight up.

Yes, actually they do. But since I live near a huge military base, it doesn't bother me.

Re the guy who makes me nervous? He's issuing death threats against Obama.