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Last week, we traced the New York Times editorial page’s growing disenchantment with Hillary Clinton, whom they endorsed back in February.
Today, the editorial board argues that Clinton has every right to stay in the race. “But …”
we believe just as strongly that Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones. We believe it would also be a terrible mistake if she launches a fight over the disqualified delegations from Florida and Michigan.
In other words, she can stay in the race as long as she doesn’t use the only weapons she has left.
This is what will, I believe, turn the remaining superdelegates against Clinton. (Even after Tuesday, they’ve been hesitant to take sides.) The only weapons she has left are ugly ones. The race case, which Clinton articulated in an interview with USA Today (“Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again”), is a particularly yucky line of argument. Her point isn’t new; her phrasing is. And when it’s enough to turn off Joe Conason, you know the end is nigh.
Her other case, that Florida and Michigan must be seated, isn’t as bad as the Times suggests. There will certainly be heated negotiations over how to seat the delegates, but the Obama camp isn’t putting up as big a fight as before. The reason: If the DNC halves the votes of the Florida and Michigan delegations, as it likely will, Clinton still can’t catch up. She could claim that counting Florida and Michigan means she won the popular vote, but that's a shaky leg on which to rest your candidacy when Obama wasn't on the Michigan ballot.
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Ever since the Clinton campaign went on life support earlier this week, there’s been speculation that Barack Obama could persuade Hillary to drop out by promising to pay off her campaign debt. The Huffington Post’s Tom Edsall wrote that “it is not uncommon for winning presidential campaigns to pick up some or all of a competitor's debts and obligations, although the size of Clinton's debt and her personal loans to her campaign are unprecedented - somewhere over and above $20 million.” Meanwhile, diarists at DailyKos started hyperventilating that their Obama donations would be given to subsidize Clinton’s ailing campaign. Is their fear justified?
No it’s not. Obama can’t just “pay back” Clinton’s debt. FEC rules limit contributions from one candidate committee to another at $2000, according to FEC spokesman Bob Biersack. So even if Obama wanted to cut Hillary a $10 million check, he couldn’t. Nor could he route his money through the DNC, since national party committees can only give $5000 to a candidate committee.
What Obama can do is fundraise for her. Over the past year, Obama has established a formidable online fundraising apparatus that has raked in more than $240 million since the campaign began. If he called for supporters to chip in for Clinton, or set up a joint fundraising committee, he could probably drum up some cash. How much is unclear. Obama/Clinton relations remain icy, and many Obama supporters might hesitate to cut $2300 checks for the candidate they see as overstaying her welcome in order to weaken Obama against McCain. Plus, if small-bore donors have limited funds, they’re more likely to give Obama cash for the general than to get the multi-millionaire Clinton back on her feet.
Anyway, short story, any money Obama “gives” to Clinton has yet to be raised. Donors who have contribute to his campaign between now and when Clinton drops out shouldn't worry about their dollars replenishing Clinton's coffers.
Also check out Jacob Leibenluft's Explainer, "Can a Campaign Go Bankrupt?"
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In the new issue of Time, Karen Tumulty's list of the Five Mistakes Hillary Made includes a damning anecdote from a Clinton campaign strategy session last year:
As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn
confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her
over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates.
It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows,
Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their
delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to
award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider
Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and
let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much
vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"
So maybe that's why Clinton says she'd be winning if the Democrats used Republican rules. Her chief strategist thought they did!
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson tells me he's "denying on behalf of Penn" that it ever happened.
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Now that Barack Obama has all but secured the Democratic nomination, his campaign appears to be softening a bit when it comes to Michigan and Florida.
Today, the Michigan Democratic Party settled on its final proposal for divvying up the state’s delegates: Clinton gets 69 delegates, Obama gets 59. (That’s about halfway between a 50-50 split and the state’s Jan. 15 votes, which would have given Clinton 73 and Obama—or, rather, “Uncommitted”—55.) The Obama camp’s reaction? “It is clear results in January won’t be used to allocate delegates, and we agree with that decision,” said spokesman Bill Burton. Not quite a full endorsement of the plan, but it's a far cry from what they could say, given that Obama wasn’t on the ballot there.
Florida, meanwhile, has not finalized a plan to seat the delegates—the “plan” is still to seat them all. But they know that’s not realistic. More likely, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which meets on May 31, will approve a compromise deal. (Or at least to settle on a plan to submit to the Credentials Committee in June.) Last week, one member of the committee, California Rep. Garry Shay, predicted that Florida will be seated based on the January results, with each delegate getting half a vote. That seems likely, if only because the DNC gets to punish Florida for violating the rules without alienating Florida Democrats for all time.
In this case, too, it looks like the Obama camp is coming around. “I think they’ve loosened up a lot,” said a Democratic insider familiar with the seating process. “They went from suggesting 50-50 to now saying we can work something out. It doesn’t matter to them anymore. They’re looking toward the general election, and that’s far more important.”
In other words, they know they’ve already won. Obama reportedly plans to declare victory on May 20, when he’s all but guaranteed to secure a majority of pledged delegates. He currently leads by 166 pledged delegates, so losing 10 of them to Clinton in Michigan and 40 in Florida (a proportional delegate split would be 111-74) wouldn’t make him vulnerable. By May 20, it won’t matter whether or not Florida and Michigan are seated—Hillary isn’t catching up.
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Yesterday, Trailhead invited readers to imagine what would have to happen for Barack Obama to lose the Democratic nomination. And boy did you respond. You, dear readers, are a motley assortment of creative and disturbed geniuses.
Scenarios tended to fall into a few categories: embarrassing revelations, major screw-ups, Clinton ex machinas, and unfortunate occurrences. Others involved Obama turning out to be someone—or something—other than himself, such as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“note that you never see the Rev. & Obama in the same place!”), “the smoke monster from Lost,” Dennis Kucinich in disguise, and John McCain’s illegitimate black child. Several other scenarios involved zombie attacks and alien invasions. Yet another described a heinous Aristocrats-like stage performance by the Obama family.
We can’t possibly share them all, but here’s a sampling organized by category. Winners are at the bottom.
Embarrassing revelations:
Obama is actually 34 years old, too young to be president.—Marc Sylvestre
Video surfaces of Obama at that Rev. Wright “God Damn America” sermon that he claims he didn't attend, especially if the video shows him applauding that statement.—Brian Weber
Obama photographed raising pinky while sipping latte!—Benjamin Clark
Customs agents find one of Natalee Holloway's “Carlos ’n Charlie's Aruba” T-shirts in his luggage.—Tom Grayman
Obama’s opening his mail while being interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. He drops a Hallmark card. O’Reilly helpfully picks it up for him and reads the inscription: “Barack: Thanks for the visa! See you soon! Your BFF, Nadhmi.”—Boyd Reed
Pictures of an 8-year-old Obama in his local neighborhood bomb-making class with William Ayers and other Weather Undergrounders.—Jen Geiger
The Drudge Report uncovers shocking photographic evidence that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden were actually college roommates. … They depict Bin Laden doing keg stands while Obama stands to the side holding his turban and counting in Arabic.—Rudy Santelises
He shot Alexander Hamilton. And there's video.—Andrew Rice
Reader Mark Schondorf submits a whole list of shocking twists, including: “Hillary summons a Kraken”; “Obama was a ghost THE WHOLE TIME!!!”; “Hillary goes back in time to kill Obama’s mother”; “Hillary wins because, as it turns out, she's Keyser Söze”; and “Unbelievably, the aliens are afraid of water.”
Major screw-ups:
Obama confesses that the blackout “ending” of the series finale of The Sopranos was his idea.—Scott Schiefelbein
The only way that Obama could possibly lose the nomination is if video of him punching a baby surfaced.—Nick Wilhelmy
There is only one unforgivable crime in America … dogfighting.—Tom Bianchi
The reason he doesn't believe the government created AIDS is because he did.—Shane Mehling
Clinton ex machina:
The best scenario for Hillary is to run as John McCain’s running mate. And for McCain to die.—Dea Henrich [So Obama would still be the nominee, but we had to include.—Ed.]
The Clinton campaign digs up records in the National Archives proving that Hawaii was not a state at the time of Obama's birth, thereby making him ineligible.—Pamela Belyn
Bill Clinton starts campaigning on his behalf before June 3.—Eric Samuels
Hillary sheds two tears.—Jon Cowan
Unfortunate occurrences:
Obama will need to be photographed windsurfing … and then get eaten by a shark.—Stephen Defibaugh
Obama, trying to fit in with the Oregon locals, goes on a white-water rafting tour arranged by Lanny Davis Excursions.—Boyd Reed
Hillary invites Barack to her home in Chappaqua to talk about ending the race. The visit eerily resembles the movie Misery.—Boyd Reed
The winners: The best submissions managed to make a concise joke, summarize all of Obama’s vulnerabilities at once, or vividly capture the mind-bending paucity of Clinton’s odds of survival. Here are three that did the job:
3rd place: Hillary appeals to the Supreme Court, which, based upon a 2000 ruling, decides that the candidate with fewer votes wins the election.—John Kirkbride
2nd place: Hillary Clinton must parachute into Pakistan while under heavy sniper fire, infiltrate al-Qaida using a fake beard, putty nose, and duct tape, and capture Osama Bin Laden, whilst singing the “Star Spangled Banner” with one hand over her heart and an American flag lapel pin prominently shown on her outfit. She must film all of this in HD and create a montage scored to Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the U.S.A.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama must publicly convert to Islam and change his name to Osama Hafez al-Mohammed Hussein Ayatollah Obama, while burning an American flag in the Crystal Cathedral as he replaces the crucifix with a do-it-yourself Piss Christ, while performing an abortion on the exhumed body of Terri Schiavo. He should also be naked. It should then rain frogs. That ought to do it.—Jason in San Diego
1st place: One of the lesser-known consequences of quantum physics is an event called “quantum tunneling.” Here's how it happens: At a campaign stop in West Virginia, completely out of the blue, the aggregate wave functions of all the particles in Barack Obama's body end up instantaneously transporting him through the entire Earth and leaving him treading water somewhere in the Indian Ocean, or leaving his various particles scattered inside the mantle. The odds of this occurring are such that any macroscopic object tunneling through any barrier is highly unlikely in the lifespan of the universe, but it could occur!—Michael Blessington
Thank you for the submissions. You heard them here first!
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More Clinton supporters get antsy, Obama unveils a bold new strategy
to ignore Clinton, and her money woes could be deeper than expected.
All of which sinks Clinton's chances another 0.2 points to 2.3 percent.
California
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an early and dogged supporter of Hillary
Clinton, voiced doubts that Clinton "can get the delegates that she
needs" to the Hill yesterday. Feinstein also cited "negative dividends" from the race dragging on much longer. Combined with yesterday's McGovern defection, dissent in the ranks seems to be spreading. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Slate’s Nathan Heller points out that both HillaryClinton.com and BarackObama.com now redirect visitors directly to their contributions pages. (Actually, it looks like BarackObama.com just reverted as I was prepping this post.)
Clinton’s minimum suggested contribution: $5
Obama’s minimum suggested contribution: $15
Best Fundraising Ploy of the Day goes to the sudden revelation that Clinton loaned herself $ 6.4 million in April and May. Clinton's two biggest fundraising surges were after her Pennsylvania victory and the announcement that she'd loaned herself $5 million. (Obama got quite a boost from both, as well.) Today's loan announcement, coming on the heels of her Indiana squeeker, gives her the best of both worlds.
But neither candidate has released post-Indiana fundraising numbers, which suggests that their victories didn’t yield quite the cash surge that Pennsylvania did.
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Comedian/magician/author Penn Jillette has been telling a joke about Hillary Clinton for some time now. Or, rather, telling a story about the joke and its supposed meaning. But yesterday, he told it to the wrong people—Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski*—in the wrong forum.
At risk of blessing it with repetition, the joke goes something like: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. … And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."
Jillette’s point is that when he told it on stage, the audience didn’t gasp—they went wild. To him, it’s a miniparable about how Hillary can’t win. But Scarborough and Brzezinski were clearly not amused, and there’s been some minor fallout.
But imagine how much there would have been if he’d told it a day earlier. Back in February, Maureen Dowd called jokes like Jillette’s "exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don't want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated—again."
Had his ill-advised words fallen a day or two before the primary—like Obama’s cool brush off in the New Hampshire debate or Clinton’s Diner Sob—they might have gained a bit more traction and maybe even created a backlash. Instead, they got buried under election-day coverage. Not that an off-color remark by a comedian would have handed North Carolina to Clinton. But every bit of outrage counts.
* Oops. This post originally misspelled Mika Brzezinski's name.
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A high-profile change of heart, a multimillion-dollar loan, and more Obama superdelegates drag Clinton down 1.7 points to 2.5 percent.
George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for president in 1972, says he's done supporting Hillary Clinton.
He told Fox that she waged a valiant campaign but that it's time for
her to drop out because the math is too daunting. McGovern had already
flirted with Obama a few weeks ago—he told the Huffington Post that Obama had the better chance of winning in November—but today's announcement is a hiccup that Clinton can't afford.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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George McGovern isn’t a superdelegate, but his switch to Obama
is still important, because it creates a model for other flip-flopping Clinton loyalists to
imitate. Notice his rationale to MSNBC, where he professed “great affection”
for the Clintons:
“They were battling for me 36 years ago when I won the
presidential nomination and that’s why I supported Hillary in considerable part
this time.”
The implication here is that McGovern endorsed Clinton largely for
personal reasons. He never thought she’d make a better president than Obama. He
just owed her. But now that her chances are below zero, he’s shifting
allegiance to the guy who’s going to win, and who he really likes just as much
as Clinton.
That’s actually pretty similar to what
he said back in October, when he first endorsed Hillary: “We are very
fortunate that we have a marvelous collection of candidates, any one of whom I
would be happy to support for the highest office,” he said, but added that “we
have an old rule of currency in the United States: Ladies first.” That
didn’t make much sense at the time, but it makes backing out now a lot easier.
This rationale—I supported Hillary because we’re friends,
but Obama will make a smashing president—is something we’re likely to hear more
in the coming days. It lets supers switch sides without undermining their newfound
commitment to Obama.
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If yesterday’s primaries showed anything, it’s that the slings and arrows of the past few weeks—the Rev. Wright, the "bitter" comment, flag pins, and various other 'gates—have not put a significant dent in Barack Obama’s chances. Meanwhile, a consensus is building that Clinton cannot win unless disaster strikes the Obama camp. But if Wright spewing nonsense about AIDS conspiracies doesn’t derail Obama's candidacy, what will?
I’ve heard some pretty creative descriptions of what must happen to Obama or his campaign for Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Back in March, Politico wrote that "she cannot win unless Obama is hit by a political meteor." Slate’s John Dickerson writes that for Clinton to catch up now, "she must bring more states into the union." In an episode of On the Media last month, Bob Garfield described one worst-case-scenario as "a video of Barack Obama in a motel room with a den of Cub Scouts setting fire to the American flag." To which I added, "He has to be client number eight, pretty much."
You can do better. What sort of out-there, long-shot, one-in-a-kajillion occurrences must happen to Clinton or Obama to bring about the Obamapocalypse and hand Clinton the nomination? Send your ideas here, and we’ll post the best ones later this week.
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The foundation of Hillary Clinton’s support is beginning to crack. George McGovern, whom you may remember from his starring role in the 1972 election, has called for Clinton to drop out of the race and says he is now endorsing Barack Obama. He’s the first—and, thus far, only—Clinton supporter who has jumped ship since last night's results*, but he still makes quite a splash.
Guiding his decision may be his own tortured history with drawn-out delegate fights and backroom deals at the 1972 convention. To win the nomination in 1972 he had to fight through several delegate challenges, the most serious of which was about the way California’s delegates would be allocated. There’s a lot of nuance involved—including credentials committee, the Supreme Court, and conventionwide votes, but here’s the gist: The California Democratic Party decided the state would use a winner-take-all system to allot its delegates. McGovern won the state by 5 percent, so he earned all 271 of the California’s delegates. Later, the DNC adopted a proportional allocation system, and McGovern’s opponents wanted to stop California from earning a grandfather-clause reprieve. Essentially, McGovern thought his opponents were changing the rules of the game as time was winding down. Sound familiar?
Per Hunter S. Thompson, here’s what McGovern said after the credentials fight was over:
The confrontations with the Old Guard seldom come in public. There are conversations on the telephone, plans are laid, people are put to work, and it’s done quietly. California is a classic. There will never be a case in American politics of such a naked power grab—straight power, no principle, straight opportunism. I wasn’t aware of it. … We were naïve. … [W]e really got scared when we saw the ferocity of their attack.
Personal experience has soured McGovern on naked power grabs, straight power, a dearth of principle, and straight opportunism. Personal experience has told him he can no longer support Hillary Clinton for president.
*UPDATE 2:10 p.m.: Originally, I neglected to make clear that McGovern is the first to change sides since Clinton's defeat in North Carolina and narrow win in Indiana.
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Over the last few elections the "Limbaugh effect" has gone from grassroots conspiracy theory to Obama-campaign talking point. On a campaign call today, John Kerry said that "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, [Obama] would have won."
Did mischievous Republicans make the difference in Indiana?
There are a couple of ways to look at the math. Clinton won the state by about 18,000. Exit polls show that 10 percent of Democratic primary voters were Republicans, 54 percent of whom went for Clinton. Since about 1.3 million people voted total, that means about 68,000 of them were Republicans who voted for Clinton, compared to about 58,000 who voted for Obama. So if Republicans hadn’t been allowed to vote, as Ben Smith points out, Obama would have gained 10,000—not enough to catch up. Likewise, for "Limbaugh Democrats" to have made the difference, they would have to make up a quarter of the Republicans who voted for Hillary (18,000/68,000 = 0.26). That seems unlikely.
More compelling is an examination of Clinton voters who said they’d vote for McCain in the general. The Obama campaign points out that 16 percent of Democratic primary voters said they’d prefer McCain over Clinton in a general election matchup—and 41 percent of those voters actually voted for Clinton in the primary. That means about 7 percent of the Democratic electorate—about 83,000 voters—voted for Clinton in the primary and said they’d vote for McCain in the general even if Clinton were the nominee.
That number is hard to refute. And there’s scattered anecdotal evidence that Republican voters set out to vote tactically voted for Clinton as part of Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos." But, then again, if the goal is sabotage, why would these people answer pollsters’ questions truthfully?
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In tonight’s Deathwatch, I asked, “Clinton pledged to stay in the race. The question is, why?”
The answer is pretty clear, I now realize, if you look at the upcoming primary calendar. Next Tuesday, West Virginia votes. Polls are sparse, but Clinton is expected to win. A week later comes Kentucky, where Clinton has a massive lead, and Oregon, where Obama is favored. That’s two potentially wide victories for Clinton in two weeks.
It won’t help her numbers much. West Virginia and Kentucky have only 99 delegates combined (pledged and unpledged), while Oregon has 65, so she isn’t going to rack up many delegates. Likewise, she won’t significantly close Obama’s popular-vote lead.
But for Clinton, the nomination isn’t about numbers anymore. There’s no metric by which she can plausibly win, even if Florida and Michigan are counted. Now it’s about derailing Obama or waiting for him to derail himself. Clinton has come this far; why not ride out this rough patch—however many people call for her to drop out—and see what happens?
Worst-case scenario, she spends a few million more dollars and drops out in late May or early June. (Remember how long Huckabee stuck around, just to see what happened?) Better that than drop out tomorrow, only to have some damning revelation about Obama emerge over the next month. Clinton paints herself as a fighter, but her best shot at the nomination is now less about fighting than waiting.
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We're hunkered down in Trailhead HQ watching the cable networks, and the coverage of the frozen Lake County results are striking for one reason, in particular: The pundits keep on chattering about something that doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter who wins Indiana—we know that one of the candidates will by one or two points, at which point the delegate margin is neglibile. Indiana has 72 pledged delegates, 25 of which are allocated based on the statewide vote, and 47 of which are allocated based on proportions in each congressional district. There may be a delegate or two to swing in Lake County's district, and there may be one or two up for grabs in the statewide total. Proof of this: NBC News has already allocated all but six of Indiana's delegates.
We aren't in Clinton's war room right now, but we've got a feeling that those few delegates aren't going to decide whether she drops out of the race tomorrow, next week, or next month.
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Tapping into our Map the Candidates archive, we discover that Clinton has made five stops in Lake County; Obama has made two. That includes one stop from each in Gary.
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Warning: The post you’re about to read is very math-heavy, and very speculative. But it’s worth a read if you’re waiting on the returns from Lake County in Indiana, which may not come in until after midnight.
Lake County is the only substantial county yet to report its vote tallies. We crunched some numbers to estimate what percentage of the county’s vote Obama would need to earn to beat Clinton overall in Indiana.
First, we have to project how many people have voted tonight in Lake County based on Indiana’s overall turnout. To help, we’ll compare those numbers to the general election turnout in 2004.
Tonight, 1,039,781 people voted with 84 percent of precincts reporting. If you extrapolate it out to 100 percent, about 1,237,835 people will vote overall in the Democratic primary.
In 2004, 2,445,153 people voted for president in Indiana, 967,346 of them for Kerry. Tonight's estimated turnout is almost exactly half of the total votes cast in '04.
Now, we’ll zoom in on Lake County, and using its contribution to the overall vote in 2004, we’ll estimate the county’s turnout in today’s primary.
In 2004, 108,219 Lake County residents voted for John Kerry, while 68,512 voted for Bush. Combined, that's 176,731. That’s 7.2 percent of the state's total vote, 11.2 percent of the state’s total Democratic vote.
Now, we’re at a crossroad in our assumptions. We’ll set up a range for Lake County’s possible turnout. Our lower bound will be that Lake County makes up 7.2 percent of the state’s total vote in the primary. Our upper bound will be the 11.2 percent figure.
Multiplying our bounds by the total projected turnout for today’s primary vote, we can get hard numbers for our projected turnout in the county.
If Lake County comprises 7.2 percent of the state's total primary vote, it will cast 88,442 total votes. If it comprises 11.2 percent of the state's total primary vote, it will cast 137,006 votes.
Obama currently trails by 42,500 votes with 84 percent reporting.
Now, we’ll calculate the percentage of votes Obama needs to win in Lake County, using both of our bounds.
If the county casts 88,442 votes (7.2 percent of the state’s total), he'll need to win 74 percent of the votes in the county—65,471 total—to get the net gain of 42,500 he needs.
If Lake County casts 137,006 votes (11.2 percent of the state’s total), he'll need to win 65.5 percent of the votes in the county—89,739 total—to get the net gain of 42,500 he needs.
As you can see, Lake County’s turnout greatly affects the percentage of vote Obama needs from the county to overtake Clinton. Both numbers are achievable, though, because Lake County includes Gary, Ind., which is 85 percent African-American.
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Obama comes up big in North Carolina, and Clinton ekes out a win (as
of 11 p.m.) in Indiana, the combination of which all but ends Clinton's
shot at the nomination. Her chances drop 8.4 points to 4.2 percent.
For
the past few weeks, Hillary Clinton's candidacy has rested on two
possibilities: 1) Winning the popular vote and 2) convincing
superdelegates that Obama cannot win certain types of voters. (The
delegate count is out of reach; she would need at least 70 percent of
the remaining delegates to surpass Obama.) Today, Obama exploded both
arguments.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Ever since Barack Obama started racking up primary and caucus wins after Super Tuesday, analysts have summed up Hillary Clinton’s prognosis with an odd statistic: the percent of the vote she needs in every remaining primary to catch up in pledged delegates.
Going into tonight, that margin was just over 69 percent. Based on current estimates for Indiana and North Carolina, by tomorrow morning it will be close to 85.
I should hasten to point out that this statistic has always been mostly meaningless since some states have many more delegates than others. But it’s a convenient way to express an ugly reality for Clinton: the longer this race goes on, the less time and fewer delegates she has with which to catch up.
One could argue that this is an unfair statistic; even the Clinton camp doesn’t argue that they can catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, and we’ve long surpassed the point where Obama could clinch the nomination even with 100 percent of the remaining vote.
But the statistic does remind us of this: The high-water mark for Clinton has risen after every contest, even after a win. After Obama won D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, she needed about 57 percent of the remaining vote; after March 4, it was 63 percent. Even when she picked up a net gain of 12 delegates in Pennsylvania, the mark inched up by a fraction of a percent, to 69. The finish line has simply outrun her.
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Obama is speaking in North Carolina now. At least as far as we can tell, everybody behind him is white. Only one person is male.