I suspect you're misreading the post. The point appears to be that even if Clinton performs improbably well in every remaining contest, she'll still lose by a healthy margin.

I have been known to misunderstand things from time to time. As soon as I read a couple of your previous posts, however, I got what you were getting at.

What are the "Subtotals" you reference above? When I add the remaining contests using the corrected Puerto Rico numbers, I get Obama 263, Clinton 303. The 263 matches the difference between the NBC tally and the projected total for Obama, but the Clinton difference is 299.

Sorry if I sound like a stickler on this, but as we all know, every vote counts, so it's important that we count every vote.

To the committed Clintonite, this math merely underscores that Obama also can't win the nomination without automatic delegates. And if you firmly believe the GOP will beat Obama senseless this fall, you cling to the hope that the automatic delegates come to their senses and realize that only Hillary can win in November.

While I'll admit to having some fear about the effectiveness of race-baiting tactics against Obama in the general election, I also believe Clinton is quite vulnerable to GOP attacks, probably more so. More importantly, I don't believe the Democrats should choose their nominee based primarily on how they suspect he or she will survive against GOP attacks. That didn't work out too well in 2004 (although we'll never know how Howard Dean would have done against Bush).

As I see it, Hillary Clinton has failed to provide a strong, positive explanation for why she wants to be president. Obama stands for ending the war in Iraq, and for "change". McCain stands for staying the course in Iraq, and making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Listening to the Clinton campaign, you'd believe she should be president because Obama is too inexperienced and/or too likely to lose in November.

Kerry had a similar problem in 2004 of not offering a strong enough positive basis for his own campaign. His rationale was, effectively, "I'm more competent than Bush". That's a much weaker way to run.

Corrected link

Another Reader, the argument to follow the "popular vote" is very calculated by the Clinton campaign. It is an attempt to marginalize the results in the caucus states. Not as many people vote in caucuses as vote in primaries, so an appeal to the popular vote suppresses Obama's success in caucus states, which had disprportionately smaller turnouts.

Whether states should use caucuses or not is an argument for another day. Some prefer caucuses because it allows party members to take a more in-depth look at the candidates via the discussions of the candidates & it allows party members to challenge each other's views in attempting to sell others on their opinions. The benefit of primaries is obviously that the results are based on greater voter participation.

Since the preferred method of selecting delegates is up to the states & not to the candidates or to the national committee, the attempt at suppression of caucus state results is an attempt at jury nullification.

The bottom line is that we don't select nominees or presidents by popular vote. Maybe we should, but it's too late for that discussion at this point in the process. A committee to revise the nominating process can be set up after the election. For now, we're stuck with what we have.

The argument to use the popular vote might have some validity in the "winner take all" Republican Party where McCain won many states with 70% of those participating voting against him. But the process of proportional allocation of delegates used in the Democratic nominating process is about as fair & as close to the will of the people as you can get. For a system that uses a combination of primaries & caucuses, the delegate count, which is based on proportionality, is a better better measure the people's votes in both caucus & primary states because it isn't tipped toward the larger turnout in primary states. It's just an attempt to disproportionately favor those primary states in the same way that they have argued that states with a history of voting Democratic should be given more weight than traditionally red states, thereby disenfranchising red state Democrats. Where is George Orwell when you need him?

The pros in the Clinton camp obviously know this, but it's just one more cynical ploy on their part to overturn the will of the people.

AnotherReader,

Due to the hybrid nature of delegate selection (primaries here, caucuses there, and both in Texas), while you can sum the "popular vote", doing so drastically underweights caucus states relative to primary states. Not only do fewer people tend to participate in lengthy caucuses than vote in primaries, for some caucus states we don't even have initial preference counts for all attendees, we just have district or state-wide delegate totals. Those states are invisible in any national "popular vote" count. Which suits Clinton just fine, as Obama in aggregate did much better than she did in caucus states.

Convention delegates in theory balance this out, because the state allotments are roughly proportional to their populations. So talking about the popular vote isn't really fair under the present system.