NINE CONTESTS remain before one of the most remarkable episodes in primary election history draws to a close on June 3 when 31 delegates from Montana and South Dakota will cast their votes for the next president of the United States. Most likely, it will not matter.

All told, 390 delegates have yet to be counted with the biggest remaining prize being North Carolina with 115.

Yet unless Hillary Clinton can muster up a miracle, or Rush Limbaugh and his fellow architects of "Operation Chaos" have convinced thousands more Republicans to re-register and vote in overwhelming numbers for Clinton in these states, as is dubiously claimed they did in Pennsylvania, it is the end of the road for the Clinton team.

Numerically speaking - that is.

With his anticipated victories in North Carolina, Oregon, Kentucky and Puerto Rico (with 55 delegate votes) and the last Midwestern battle in Indiana on May 6 looking dead even, Obama will cross the finish line with stronger bragging rights by virtue of the larger number of pledged delegates and popular votes.

Then it will be up to the superdelegates - the final arbiters as to whether Democrats will choose sanity over Armageddon - to announce their choice. Fewer than 300 remain on the fence, presumably waiting to see which way the winds will be blowing.

If they play by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean's rules, we could know who the nominee is as early as two and a half months before the August convention - giving the combatants time to heal their wounds and demonstrate some semblance of unity before taking on John McCain.

If these superdelegates adhere to the most politically conscionable, legally supportable and ethically justifiable script, Barack Obama will be that nominee.

If Clinton persists in her separate campaign to have the delegates from the uncontested elections in Michigan and Florida counted in her favor - a matter that will not be resolved, if then, until the convention and not without a bitter floor fight - even the strong interventions of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might not be enough to forestall the Disaster in Denver.

And should the Clintonites convince enough superdelegates to vote for her, essentially disenfranchising a majority of the nation's primary voters, the cry "sellout" will reverberate from coast to coast.

This is not a prediction of defeat in November if Clinton is the nominee. It is a prediction that the road to victory will be a much more difficult one if the Democrats already have bludgeoned themselves into pulp before the real battle even begins, and only Hillary Clinton holds the power to change that.

Forget all the quaint theories about whether the big state victories argument (which the Clinton forces keep pushing) wins out in November, or whether her strengths among blue-collar, women and older voters offsets Obama's attractiveness to younger, more affluent voters, black Americans, independents and even Republicans.

If history is any guide, the showing candidates make in the larger states during primaries has no correlation to what happens in general elections. Just ask Walter Mondale, who bested Gary Hart almost everywhere in 1984, and ended up winning only his home state of Minnesota in the Reagan landslide.

One can just as easily argue that Obama has put the entire map in play with impressive performances in such swing states as Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa - which together have more electoral votes than Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada and New Mexico, where Clinton won.

The theoretical issues are: Can a young, bright charismatic leader of mixed racial ancestry but largely untested judgment who has forged a broad-based coalition pull in enough traditional Democrats to win? Or would an older, equally tough and talented woman with stronger party roots fare better?

But first: Will the Democrats put in nomination the candidate who will have rightfully earned it or the candidate who refuses to give it up at any cost?

Richard Rubin writes a monthly column for the Marin Independent Journal. For more information on the author or to read his past articles, contact the Marin Independent Journal or visit their website at