Dateline: Kennedy Space Center, June 4, 2008:

Hillary Clinton announced that her campaign would continue "...until
every Martian voice is heard and respected."  Pointing out that, as of
yet, no Martian delegates had been selected, "No one can say they have
won the nomination until each and every state -- red states, blue
states and little green states, have been heard from!"

(It gets even stranger after the cut)

There are any number of events that stand out as turning points in the
2008 Democratic campaign.

We could go back long before 2008 if we liked, to August, 2004, and
note the millions of people who saw and heard Barack Obama for the
first time giving his now-famous keynote speech at the Democratic
convention.

We could point to his Iowa victory speech ("They said this day would
never come!", or his New Hampshire concession speech ("Yes. We.
Can!").  Or we could suggest the Edward and Caroline Kennedy
endorsements, reaching out as they did to an older generation with
memories of past glory and heartbreak.

But it all might have been for naught but for a single sentence.  That
sentence was not uttered by Barack Obama, despite his rhetorical skill
-- it was uttered by his most formidable opponent, Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton.  

             CELEBRATE SUPERDELEGATE IRRELEVANCE

Sometime in the next few weeks, projecting from past trends, Obama
will achieve superdelegate parity with Clinton.

Let's put the superdelegates back into their accustomed obscurity.
Read more below.

Since delegate votes decide the nominee, why should we care?

The critical thing to realize is that because the notion of a popular
vote metric exists at all, THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN HAS
ALREADY WON this battle.

It's called a Pyrrhic victory, for good reason.

"One more such victory would utterly undo him."

Or in this case, her.

                      A SUPERDELEGATE FANTASY

What would the delegate situation look like now, all else being equal,
assuming that the Democratic Party had a smaller number of SuperDelegates?
((First diary attempt!))

Assume, just for fancy, that instead of the current system, all the
Add-on delegates were removed, along with all DNC members except the 9
DNC Executive Committee members and the Chairs and Vice Chairs of the
50 states, DC, and the four voting territories, for a total of 119 DNC
members.

First I show the current situation, taking numbers from DemConWatch.
Then I show the situation as it would exist (all else being equal),
give the above scenario.  (I reduced the number of endorsing DNC
superdelegates proportionally)