Um …

She means if you don't give Obama votes from MI.

Look, she'll make her argument, but we don't know. She could be dropping out tomorrow or in June, but it's over now.

I know myself and Mr. Abel have been traumatized gravely by this primary season, but I recommend just relaxing and waking up sometime around September for the General Election.The first trek is over, my friend, we can breathe a little easier now.

If I'm not mistaken (and I might be) I don't believe the Clinton campaign is including any of the votes from those caucus states which Obama won handily, but which don't release vote counts.

In any case, it's all just spin (successful at that!) to try and distract the media from the fact that Obama tonight goes over the hump with the majority of available pledged delegates, and that he now leads solidly in superdelegates. The thing is, it's toxic spin, as is so much of what has come out of her campaign over the last couple of months.

Though it has been clear for that long that her "path to victory" was all but non-existant, she has continued to campaign to convince her supporters that it was still well within reach. As it becomes ever clearer that it is not, her supporters grow angrier and angrier that she is somehow being denied what is rightfully hers - as in "but she won the popular vote!" or "Obama is disenfranchising the good people of Michigan and Florida!" though he has nothing to do with their predicament, and the issue in any case will be settled on May 31 when the rules committee meets.

Again, it's toxic to the process, the party, Obama and herself. I expected better of her honestly, but she seems determined to justify every complaint the far left and far right ever painted the Clintons with.

FiveThirtyEight had an *excellent* article yesterday on this very topic:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/clinton-...

In short: Her "I am winning the popular vote" argument does have some sway among some people. HOWEVER - the *way* that she is pushing the argument now stretches credibility past the breaking point. The ONLY way she can make the claim is by including the self-disenfranchised Florida totals, PLUS include the self-disenfranchised Michigan votes, but only if you exclude all votes not for her in Michigan, PLUS exclude all the caucus states as well. (It seems supremely ironic to me that Clinton wants to claim that all 50 states should count, but dismisses people's votes in states like Iowa and Washington as irrelevant, and can only reach the majority threshold by including territories like Puerto Rico that cannot vote in the general election. Classy there, Clinton).

Anyway, go read the FiveThrityEight article. Good stuff.

One thing is clear. At the rules committee meeting, they may as well just disband the rules committee. Almost half of Democrats--those supporting Hillary--think the rules don't count. So why not have a 50 state January primary? No state can now be denied. No candidate will ever again forgo campaigning in a state whose primary is not supposed to count.

Oh, by the way Hillary. It's over.

Obama voluntarily took his name OFF of the Michigan ballot to pander to Iowans, and certainly collected some reward for that. His whinging about MI is roughly equivalent to someone complaining that they should get a test score even though they played hooky and never took the test. Sorry, no-show equals a zero.

Had he and John Edwards stayed on the ballot, the most recent polling at the time indicates that they would have gotten about 19% and 22% respectively. Edwards' MI numbers were rising, and Obama's falling. Hillary came in about the same level she polled at before the ballot change. And I don't hear Obama whining about winning more delegates in Texas and Nevada while losing the popular vote in those states.

Of course, what counts for the nomination is delegates, just as what counts for the Presidency is Electoral College delegates. NOT the popular vote. (Um, sweet Gorian irony!)

Florida carried 185 delegates, Michigan carried 128 delegates. The current delegate "spread" between Obama and Clinton is about 195 or so.

If you count everything, it really is a neck-and-neck self-inflicted party clusterfuck.

It's not over yet. We know the Florida and Michigan outlaws will want to be seated and that Clinton will want them to be seated, for example. (I don't know how much weight should really be given to the psychological ploy that the Clinton camp has used in addition to the lying about the legitimacy of the vote results in those two states: If the delegates aren't seated [and likely will reward Clinton to some extent at the convention, perhaps getting her nominated], the voters in those two states, who are "disenfranchised" [sic!], will be angry and may vote Republican as a result this November.)