For the first time in a bit, Hillary picks up some superdelegates. In today’s update on CNN’s delegate tracker, Clinton picks up six superdelegates, while Obama picks up one.
Basic stats at the moment: There are 922 delegates yet to be allocated (including both pledged and super). Obama needs 402 of them to win (that’s 43.6%). Clinton needs 539 of them to win (that’s 58.5%).
I’ve talked a bunch about the math over the past few weeks. How basically given the numbers this is impossible for Clinton absent a complete implosion of the Obama campaign. There have been a number of articles on this elsewhere too of course. The latest in this genre, which got a lot of attention in the blogosphere yesterday, is this one:
Story behind the story: The Clinton myth
(Jim VanDehei & Mike Allen, Politico)
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.
In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.
And it goes on from there. It is very worth reading the whole thing.
