Below The Beltway

Hillary Clinton tried to argue that seating Michigan and Florida would put her in the delegate lead. Well, that isn’t the case.

So, she tried arguing that the superdelegates were supporting her. Well, that’s not happening anymore.

When that didn’t work, she fell back on a convoluted argument about the popular vote, but has been exposed as intellectually dishonest and just plain wrong.

So, what does she do now ? Drop out ? Are you kidding me ? This is a Clinton we’re talking about, she just invents a new specious argument:

MAYSVILLE, Ky. – Adding a new mathematical twist to her case for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that she had not only won more popular votes than Senator Barack Obama, she had won states totaling far more electoral votes.

“The states that I’ve won total 300 electoral votes,” she told about 300 people in a high school gymnasium in Maysville, the birthplace of the actor George Clooney. “The question is who can win 270 electoral votes? My opponent has won states totaling 217 electoral votes.”

As she has in the past, she discounted Mr. Obama’s victories in caucus states and states likely to vote Republican in November, ticking off Alaska, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas and Idaho. “Many of his votes and delegates come from caucus state which have a relatively low turnout,” she said.

“Right now more people have voted for me than have voted for my opponent,” Mrs. Clinton said, without explaining how she reached that arithmetic certainty. “More people have voted for me than anybody who’s ever run for president before.” (Her campaign later clarified this remark saying Mrs. Clinton was talking about more people voting for her than anyone previously in a Democratic primary.)

She added, “This is nowhere near over. None of us is going to have the delegates we need to get to the nomination” after results from Oregon and Kentucky are tallied on Tuesday.

Here’s the thing, though, when you look at many of the state’s that Clinton won, they are clearly states that Obama will win easily in November. Does anyone seriously think that Obama is going to lose California (55 Electoral Votes), New York (31 Electoral Votes), New Jersey (15 Electoral Votes), Connecticut (7 Electoral Votes), or Massachusetts (12 Electoral Votes) ? That’s 120 virtually guaranteed Electoral Votes right there, 50% of the 270 that Obama will need to win.

So, no Hillary, this argument doesn’t work either.

Which is probably why they’re now relying on Karl Rove to save them:

Update | 3:20 p.m. The Clinton campaign, in an email message from spokesman Phil Singer, offered as evidence for their electoral college argument a memo from Karl Rove obtained by ABC News, which provides an estimate of electoral votes based on public opinion polls.

Mrs. Clinton cited the memo in an appearance in Prestonsburg, Ky., saying, “I believe I am the stronger candidate and just today I found some curious support for that position when one of the TV networks released an analysis by, of all people, Karl Rove, saying I was the stronger candidate. And there it is.”

Heh.

H/T: James Joyner