Josh's latest on his front page finally does it! I'll just copy here the email I sent to Josh:

Exactly what sort of shark jumping does quoting Robert Reich prove? He's had a bit of an intellectual beef with the Clintons for a while, after all.

Are we shocked, SHOCKED to discover election season politics going on here? From, gasp, Hillary Clinton? When I heard about the gas tax thing, I turned to my wife and remarked that Hillary sure wasn't afraid to put on her fishnet stockings. Even those "low information" voters in IN and NC probably aren't totally stupid. They know they'll likely never see that money, but it is a test of whether a candidate is willing to say that they could use a break, even if it brings down the wrath of the well-off and right-thinking. Are Dems now morally obligated to once again go forth with high minded Adlai-ism? Thank God Hillary is willing to work a street corner or two, if that is what it takes.

When King Henri IV first spoke of a chicken in every pot, an economic advisor told him that it was a mere pander, irrelevant to the real needs of the peasantry. Henri sent the man's head to his current mistress, which has something to do with why he is still the one and only beloved king of France.

In his front pager, All the way to Denver, Josh indulges in some rhetorical overstretch to match anything he accuses Camp Hillary of saying. First of all, what is "astonishing" about Hillary saying she is in it till the convention? She would be an idiot to say anything else. She is pushing back against this week's theme, from the Obama camp and the MSM, that she should get out of the race.

Obama's chances of winning the nomination outright by pledged delegates from the remaining primaries are the same as Hillary's of overtaking his pledged delegate lead: effectively nil. Neither candidate can be nominated without support from a few hundred superdelegates, though Obama will need fewer of them.

MTP is on on the other room, and Peter Beinart just delivered himself of a comment that summarizes perfectly the peculiar logic of conventional wisdom. He estimated Hillary's chances of winning as insignificant (5 percent) - then acknowledges that this will change if she dominates the late primaries. Which is tantamount to admitting that his 5 percent estimate is meaningless, an "if the convention were held today" hypothetical.

Josh implicitly does the same thing. He assumes that Obama's lead in pledged delegates is disposative - that the superdelegates will not and should not reverse its supposed verdict. Undoubtedly the pledged delegate count does and will weigh heavily on on the superdelegates - but nothing in the rules obligates them to follow the pledged delegates. They are free to weigh any or all of the popular vote, the hypothetical vote of MI and FL delegates, late-race momentum, general-election trial heat polling, the prospective outrage of the losing candidates' supporters, and the astrological forecast for November 4.

The proof of the pudding is that, in spite of the chorus that Hillary should get out of the race, coming from from the MSM and Respectable Opinion in general - created, by and large, by people who share the demographics and perhaps the broad outlook of Obama supporters - the superdelegates are not hopping onto the Obandwagon. If just half of the 325-odd remaining undeclared superdelegates weighed in on the Obama side, they would push him so close to the magic number that only a miracle could save Hillary, no matter how well she did in the late rounds.

So far they haven't. Apparently they are willing to wait and see what happens in the late states first. If Obama does well - he does not need to "dominate," just win handily the states he should win and not wash out horribly in the states Hillary should win - superdelegates will start drifting toward him.
By May or June enough will have drifted to push him over the magic number, and the nomination race will be effectively over.

If on the other hand Obama shows slippage in the late rounds, the superdelegates will have to weigh the picture as it looks by June. What is so complicated about that?