The Obama-Clinton primary is over. Obama is the nominee. His speech yesterday ended it. All that's left is to count the delegates.
With respect to pledged delegates,"barring an unlikely string of landslide victories by the former first lady in the remaining states," Obama will win the pledged delegate count when all the primaries and caucuses are done. Given the Democratic party's proportional delegate rules, Hillary is cooked on this one.
With respect to the overall popular vote, now that Florida and Michigan are off the table, experts say Obama's lead, currently at about 800,000, is insurmountable, barring (once again) an unprecedented string of Hillary landslides.
So Hillary's only chance of winning, as Markos has pointed out, is coup by superdelegate. Yesterday's speech by Obama ended that option for good.
People can reasonably debate whether Obama's speech will sway white working class voters in Pennsylvania. But no one can disagree that the speech has hit State-level Democratic leaders (who make up the superdelegate population) like a thunderclap. The speech reminded long time Democratic activists of why they got into politics in the first place, and even Hillary's supporters agree that it was a tour de force, and one of the greatest political speeches in modern times. There is simply no way that the superdelegates are going to move against Obama en masse in the wake of that earth shattering call to greatness. And it was a call to greatness, of the type no one under 60 has really heard from any political leader.
The game is ending. The Michigan Florida do-over option is dead. And now, the coup by superdelegate strategy is dead as well. Obama is the nominee, even if Hillary has not been mathematically eliminated. Simply put, Hillary has about as much chance of winning as Jerry Brown did in 1992, when he continued to fight Bill Clinton in April and May, before Bill had locked up a delegate majority.
It's going to be McCain vs. Obama. And it would be in everyone's interest to recognize that fact now, rather than letting Hillary and the media perpetuate the illusion for the next three months that this thing isn't over. McCain and the RNC will not wait three months. That's for sure.