Math and Mythology

I received a mass-email from the Obama campaign about three hours ago, but did not have a chance to post on it until now; subject line was simply “The math.” From the intro, leading up to the inevitable money ask:

Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday’s elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183.

That’s a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted.

For comparison, that’s less than half our net gain of 9 delegates from the District of Columbia alone. It’s also less than our net gain of 8 from Nebraska, or 12 from Washington State. And it’s considerably less than our net gain of 33 delegates from Georgia.

The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead.

They failed.

It’s clear, though, that Senator Clinton wants to continue an increasingly desperate, increasingly negative — and increasingly expensive — campaign to tear us down.

That’s her decision. But it’s not stopping John McCain, who clinched the Republican nomination last night, from going on the offensive. He’s already made news attacking Barack, and that will only become more frequent in the coming days.

Right now, it’s essential for every single supporter of Barack Obama to step up and help fight this two-front battle. In the face of attacks from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, we need to be ready to take them on.

Of course, that’s just the BHO campaign’s account, and as Justin Gardner points out, it’s not all that cut-and-dried.

Still — whether “the math” is from Obama’s people or a presumably objective source like David Kurtz at TPM — the base conclusion is the same: HRC didn’t gain much at all last night, numbers-wise.

On the other hand — as commentators here and elsewhere have already pointed out — the combination of (a) the psychological lift of HRC’s victories last night, plus (b) her campaign’s discovery (at long last) of which (admittedly negative) messages actually work against BHO … those factors may ultimately be far more important in the final outcome of this never-ending race than raw numbers ever could be.

At this point, I almost wish we could pull a communal Rip-van-Winkle, sleep until August, and then have someone wake us up and tell us what happened.