I was sort of thinking she could win if she was behind on pledged dedlegates, but ahead in the popular vote, and ahead if you included Michigan and Florida. But I don't think that can even happen.

If she pulled of the nearly impossible task of grabbing 60% of the delegates available between Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, she'd still only pick up 97 delegates on Obama, who now enjoys a robust pledged delegate lead of over 160.

Add in his basically guaranteed victories in delegate-rich North Carolina, and medium-sized Mississippi and Oregon, and you see Hillary has a problem. It's already basically impossible for her to catch him. It was a very outside chance before last night, but she def needed to break even or keep the margins slim. Letting him pick up another likely 23-25 delegates? Not good.

In previous primaries and caucuses when the Republican nominee wasn't decided there were similar turnout differences. The differences after Super Tuesday are less significant to me now, though. If McCain has it sewn up, why should Wisconsin Republicans go out on a cold day to cast a meaningless vote?

"because the African-American superdelegates would switch to Obama first".

Says who?

Apparently, it's only a "racialized outcome" if it's in favor of Hillary.

Well fine, but why do her senior campaign staff keep promulgating this nonsense? If it's actually hopeless and not going to happen, all it does is create the impression that a) the Democratic Party is, well, undemocratic, and b) that's just fine with Hillary Clinton.

It's destructive, counterproductive, and harmful to the party and the country, like a lot of what the Clinton campaign has been doing lately. The more desperate they get, the more damaging and repellent their tactics. Somebody with gravitas has to sit down with them now and tell them to stop it.

I also find it amazing that Obama has done better than McCain in every single state since Super Tuesday.

Yesterday, Obama got a bigger percentage of the vote than McCain did.

Why is the Republican race over when McCain doesn't do as well as Obama???

Mark - even if she wins Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, she's likely going to be behind in pledged delegates, unless Obama suffers some kind of epic collapse and loses virtually everywhere else that's left by wide margins, as well.

The whole reason they're harping on superdelegates is because it's virtually impossible for them to catch up on pledged delegates.

The turnout difference is almost certainly attributed to the fact that the Republican race is all-but-decided and the Democratic race isn't. In open primary states, some of the Democratic ballots were likely cast by Republican voters looking to affect SOMETHING.

Eric - did you see that Democratic turnout in the meaningless beauty contest primary in Washington exceeded Republican turnout in the semi-meaningful Republican primary there?

I'm still blown away by the fact that Schmitt dug up proof, in writing, that McCain literally conspired to perpetuate a financial fraud on the American people--and on his signature issue of campaign finance reform, no less!--and nobody's reporting on it.

I'll say it again, it's one thing to take a loan against campaign finance because you believe (even delusionally) that you're going to come back and win the race, or that if your message is heard, it has the potential of transforming American politics. You're agreeing to the campaign finance rules, win or lose, and you're basically just getting an advance on money the American people have agreed to give to you.

But it's just plain unbelievable to say "Well, if I win, I'll pay you back with hard money and avoid all those annoying campaign finance restrictions that I claimed to support when I wrote them into law. But if I lose, then I'll just pretend I'm still in the race and run a Potemkin campaign for another couple weeks, so that the American people are forced to pay you back."

And we have it in writing!

Mark Schmitt's recent BHTV explains why the African-American superdelegates will go first.

In essence, a number of professional-class African-Americans will have just raised $200,000 or $300,000 for Barack Obama. That's a decent start if you wanted to run a competitive primary. If your incumbent congressman—who hasn't had a competitive election in lord knows how long—just made it harder for Obama to be the first African-American nominee, and his or her constituents just voted 85-15 for Obama, you're being handed a tremendous gift. If you can find some other hook—say, the fact that Bobby Rush sold out on net neutrality—and get some support from other institutions, you can make a go at it.

The turnout difference is almost certainly attributed to the fact that the Republican race is all-but-decided and the Democratic race isn't. In open primary states, some of the Democratic ballots were likely cast by Republican voters looking to affect SOMETHING.

Except that the difference has been there from the beginning. More voters have been coming out to primary votes or caucus on the Democratic side since Iowa. So, while McCain sewing things up has certainly increased the numbers looking to cross over to vote, it's an addition to an already existing trend.

I think you underestimate the tenacity of the Clintons. It is already abundantly clear that Hillary can never catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, unless there is some kind of deus-ex-machina event, like a super Obama scandal or something. So for Hillary to be continuing on, at great cost to the Democratic party, is evidence that the Clintons, at least, believe they can win this not by getting a lead in pledged delegates, but through the superdelegates and by getting Michigan and Florida delegations seated. If they bought your argument, and knowing that they'd need 65% of the vote out of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania to catch up, they'd fold their tent. But the fact that they are going on shows that, not surprisingly, they're putting themselves above party. As usual.

You overstate your case, Mark.

You're too good of a political historian to not know that delegates vote against the candidates they're pledged to all the time. There are plent of delegates who are on the fence between Obama and Clinton. There are even delegates who opted to be on a slate with one or the other only because they thought that candidate was a lock to win their state or district and that was the only way they could make it to the convention. What of the Edwards pledged delegates? What about delegates pledged to "uncommitted?" What if large numbers of super/automatic delegates keep their preference undisclosed to the last possible moment? It's entirely possible that if the delegate margin between Obama and Clinton is narrow enough, combined with enough vagueness about the balance of superdelegates, it might not be until the call of the roll on the first ballot that we actually know who actually (not estimated or guessed at) has the lead. Are you proposing that African-American Clinton superdelegates are going to jump ship before they know if Clinton is ahead, in this "Obama leads by one pledged delegate" scenario?

Bottom-line: there are enough intervening factors that, yes, the size of Obama's delegate margin matters.

dry_fish:

It's entirely possible that if the delegate margin between Obama and Clinton is narrow enough, combined with enough vagueness about the balance of superdelegates, it might not be until the call of the roll on the first ballot that we actually know who actually (not estimated or guessed at) has the lead.

Big if...

I just can't wait until the inaugeration day party. Gonna be a slammin!

Eric - did you see that Democratic turnout in the meaningless beauty contest primary in Washington exceeded Republican turnout in the semi-meaningful Republican primary there?

In fact, I participated in it. As an Edwards supporter who caucused for Obama, I was ready to ignore the Democractic primary and save a stamp.

Then, I heard the Clinton camp was urging their supporters to vote in the primary to give the Washington superdelegates pledged to Clinton "cover." Registering my Obama ballot in the face of this spin was worth $0.41 to me, and I imagine to many other Washington Democrats.

Anonymous at 12:26 is me.

Strong post and you make a great point in the Superdelegate analysis. Somewhere else made an apt compairison between HRC's strategy and that of America's Mayor in that they both seemed to forgo smaller states in favor of larger ones. However in the D's nomination process and the decision to allocate proportionally, that is a loser idea and has allowed BO to gain ground and momentum.

I suspect that Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania will hold true to coarse and BO will close whatever pre-campaign lead HRC had essentially dooming her chances. BO will likely have this nomination wrapped up by March 5.

Clinton NEEDS to make the super-delegate strategy sound plausible in order to keep her TX, OH, and PA voters from throwing in the towel.

I have to think that all this superdelegate talk is only in service of preventing that.

What her camp says now is hopefully not relevant to what they'll actually do if they tank on Mar. 4th.