NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, calls the race for pledged delegates "over." In less than three minutes, Todd shows demonstrates why he can now safely call Barack Obama as the winner in the race for the most pledged delegates in the Democratic nomination process.  See the video here. 

Of course, anyone who reads TPM and who follows this race closely already knew that the pledged delegate count was insurmountable. Todd and others "calling" the pledge delegate race over officially is the same as when they call a state for a candidate based on the numbers that have been reported, even if much of a state has not yet reported in.

Why does this matter: There is one group of people who no longer have to wait for additional information to "vote."  If a superdelegate has said that they will support the winner of the pledged delegate count, then we can start counting those people as Obama superdelegates. 

As for the argument that the so-called popular vote is more important than the pledged delegate count, I'd say that's a wonderful arguement when you know that your candidate will not win the most pledged delegates.  Unfortunately, it also will never be a clean or accurate count. PocketNines at Daily Kos explains the three reasons why the popular vote is a horrible measuring stick in the primary. 

So go celebrate you latte flavored kool-aid drinking Obamatrons! The race is effectively over unless Obama pulls a Spitzer (prostitute) or a Hillary (hires Mark Penn).

Now let's talk about McSame...