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I keep trying to figure out Clinton's path to the nomination. But I can't. She's not going to win with delegates, she's not going to win in the popular vote, and Michigan and Florida aren't revoting. Today, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen walk the same path:
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.But it's a game of make-believe that's keeping the likely nominee locked in a useless and damaging deathmatch with Clinton, and keeping the party from turning its attention to John McCain. My understanding is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don't want to labor ineffectually beneath another Republican president, but at some point, they're going to have to ask themselves if that's important enough to actually do something about. For now, the Clinton campaign is like a rushing linebacker who doesn't know the winning pass was thrown and caught. They're not going to change the game, but they could really hurt the quarterback.
