Clinton Wins Big, But Math is Troubling

TIME: Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2008
Clinton Wins Big, But Math is Troubling
By Mark Halperin

Hillary Clinton's popular vote victories in Texas and Ohio fundamentally change the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in at least one important way: she's still in the race for the nomination. Clinton's long, arduous campaign might have ended abruptly if Obama delivered a knock-out blow in either state. Instead, Clinton will fight on for at least the next seven weeks, until Pennsylvania votes on April 22. To get an idea of how long a period that is in political years, the Iowa caucuses — remember them? — were only eight weeks ago.

Clinton is emboldened not just by her Tuesday wins, but by several other developments over the past few days. She has now taken the popular votes in all the major industrial states that have held contests, except for Obama's home state of Illinois. Additionally, from Clinton's point of view, Obama is only now beginning to experience the aggressive media scrutiny standard for a serious presidential candidate. And she has finally found an advertising and rhetorical strategy to highlight Obama's relative lack of national security experience — his greatest weakness with voters.

But the March 4 results have not changed Obama's strongest talking point (and reality point) for why Clinton should exit the Democratic race: Math. It appears numerically impossible for her to overtake his lead among elected delegates.

Neither Obama nor Clinton can win the 2,025 delegates required for nomination without some combination of elected delegates (those chosen in primaries and caucuses) and superdelegates (party and elected officials who are automatic delegates to the Democrats' Denver convention this summer). About 800 of the approximately 4,000 delegates are superdelegates and several hundred of them are still uncommitted to either candidate. Given the remaining contests — many with electorates favorable to Obama — Obama's existing hundred-plus delegate lead, and the rules by which Democrats apportion delegates, it is almost a political and mathematical certainty that Obama will have an elected delegate lead at the end of the process, barring dramatic, unforeseen circumstances....

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Clinton's only hope of winning a majority of the delegates is to overtake Obama's elected delegate lead by winning the bulk of the remaining superdelegates....

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1719614,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner

This morning, Brokaw told Joe Scarborough on MSNBC that someone "very close to the Obama campaign" told him they have 50 endorsers "ready to go public" with their support. Presumably, this would be Obama's coup de grace after March 4.

http://slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/03/04/obama-s-delegate-bomb.aspx

they need to get out of the race.