Ok, in the interest of full disclosure let me say that I've seen this subject covered here in part but not exactly with the point that I want to make. Which is simply this: Hillary's election strategy hasn't ever cared about 50 states, heck she hasn't even cared about the majority of the states. She also frankly doesn't care about proportional awarding of delegates during the primary process within most states.
In fact, it seems that Hillary has never cared about anything other than winning the majority of the popular vote in the big ticket electoral vote states so as to take all in November. That's it. That's why she was so unprepared for the battle she's fighting now, but given her continued insistence on 'significant' states vs. 'boutique' states, it may still be the argument she inevitably uses to swing superdelegates in her direction should this primary season go all the way to the convention.
Although it is ultimately the strategy that will prove her downfall, Hillary STILL believes that at the end of the day, the important argument will not be who won the most delegates...but instead who can win the most votes in the smallest number of states with the largest portion of electoral votes -- which also happen to be the states that the traditional DLC establishment has always cared about. Why? Because of the electoral college. Here's the relevant quote from Wikipedia...
Except for Maine and Nebraska, the entire electoral college vote of a state is won by the slate of electors who receive either a simple majority (50% plus 1 vote between two candidates)...
So here's where her head is: she remembers very well the 2004 presidential election. Kerry won 252 electoral votes to Bush's 286 by essentially focusing on those states with large numbers of electors. For example, Kerry won most of New England, New York (31), California (55), Michigan (17), and Illinois (21) and Pennsylvania (21), but lost Florida (27), Texas (34) and Ohio (20), among others. Had Kerry won FL, OH or TX, we would have spared ourselves the pain and suffering of a second Bush term.
Hillary is fully aware of this and I think she may use this same argument to convince the superdelegates should this go to the convention. She will claim that since the electoral college is winner take all, and since in most of the populous, traditionally Democratic and/or swing states, her popular vote beat McCain's (although so did Obama's), and in some cases beat Obama's (OH, TX, CA, NY), then she deserves the nomination. If PA goes her way in the popular vote, this will buttress her argument further. Even though Obama wasn't on the ballot in MI and noone campaigned in FL, she will claim she won the popular vote in both of these critical states as further proof of her case.
Now there is plenty of counter analysis to combat her claims, including an analysis of the latest Survey USA info by Below the Beltway. This essentially shows that against McCain, Obama can color blue and purple a lot more of the country than Hillary, and can put states into play that haven't been there in recent memory.
But assuming we go to the convention, then the real negotiation isn't about the folks from WY, ID or DC, and it's not about the pledged delegates. It's about superdelegates. And if fear rules the day amongst the supers (many of whom are beltway insiders and jaded veteran politicos), and they start to do math the way the Kerry campaign did math in 2004, then would Hillary's argument hold up?
I'm just praying for Obama to win PA and make this whole scenario a moot point.
Update: Just to be clear, I'm not saying I buy this argument at all. I completely agree that just because Hillary can already win traditionally Dem states doesn't make her a stronger candidate. But I think she's going to argue that she can win FL, OH, MI and PA, which have had more 'swing' status and again have many more electors at stake. Since electors are winner take all, and since because of this she will say that the big states matter most, she will claim she's the better candidate.