After tomorrow, the race for the Democratic nomination will be over and, for the first time since Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy took their fight to the 1980 convention, the Democratic race will not officially be over.
As in 1980, though, when Carter had substantial lead over Kennedy going into the convention, albeit not large enough to end the race, the numbers this year make the inevitable outcome fairly clear.
Here’s where the delegate count stands as of today:
Pledged Delegates (31 unallocated)
- Barack Obama — 1,739 delegates
- Hillary Clinton — 1,624 delegates
Obama +115
Superdelegates (204 undecided)
- Barack Obama —329 Superdelegates
- Hillary Clinton — 290 Superdelegates
Obama +39
Total Delegates (235 unpledged, unallocated delegates remaining)
- Barack Obama — 2,068 delegates (50 delegates needed to win)
- Hillary Clinton — 1,914 delegates (204 delegates needed to win)
Obama +154
Clearly, Obama is leading the race and is likely to come within 40 delegates of the number he needs to win after Tuesday. So what argument does Clinton have to convince those 200+ superdelegates to support her rather than the candidate who, under the party rules, is clearly the frontrunner ?
Well, there’s their old standby, the popular vote argument:
Basically, Clinton only leads in the popular vote if you include the bogus results from Michigan, don’t give anything to Obama from that state and completely discount the popular in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington.
Doesn’t sound very democratic now, does it ?
And finally, there’s Hillary’s argument that she is better suited to beat John McCain in November.
Well, as the song goes, that ain’t necessarily so; here are two interesting maps from RealClearPolitics:
First, there’s Hillary v. McCain:
But, then, here’s Obama v. McCain:
Basically, at the present time, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running well against McCain, and both of them have a very good chance of picking up the 40-odd Electoral Votes they would need to win the General Election. Yes, Clinton is stronger in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania; but Obama has strength elsewhere and, apparently, the ability to put states like Virginia in play.
There’s no reason to believe that Hillary would be a strong General Election candidate than Obama, and that is really the only argument she has left.
