Hillary Clinton knows that she has lost the Democratic Nomination by all realistic means. The only route for her to win the nomination is a fatal mistake by the Obama campaign. We've all run through the pledged delegate and popular vote totals, and without MI or FL, she's toast.
But why does she keep making noise about overturning pledged delegates and what about super delegates overturning the pledged delegates, when she knows neither will happen? The answer is below the fold.
With all this noise from the Clinton campaign that she's willing to go after pledged delegates... it is that, just noise. Her purpose is not to win over pledged delegates or any other delegates. Her purpose is to survive longer in the race in the hopes that Obama makes a campaign ending mistake. She knows that she has already lost otherwise.
- Super Delegates - She's already gone after these forever, and she's got what, like 4 or 5 since Super Tuesday? Obama has gotten like 60 or 70 since then.
- Pledged Delegates - The campaign who wins these selects them themselves, so they are the most diehard Obama supporters. No way can she get these.
- Caucus Delegates - This is her best chance, but based on previous county & state delegate selections in other states it has shown mixed results. Some states go better for Obama after the fact, some worse. Nothing substantial though.
The same applies to her talk of super delegates overturning the pledged delegate leader. This is not going to happen, based on her super delegate performance over the past few months. See the image below, courtesy of 2008 Democratic Convention Watch:
All of the Clinton Campaign delegate / popular vote / MI, FL noise drives to one point. She is waiting on Obama to commit a fatal mistake, a campaign ender.
This is the only way Clinton can win the nomination at this point. We all know she can’t realistically overcome Obama in pledged delegates or popular vote without MI and FL. She will not suspend her campaign, because staying in and increasing the scrutiny of Obama will increase the chances of a fatal mistake by Obama.
So that presents the question: How long is she going to wait for this gaffe, before she will drop out?
Disclaimer: I’m from Oklahoma so I have a license to butcher the English language. Here's Obama's speech at Cooper Union to make up for that:
And here's a good site that uses an enormous amount of numbers to analyze possible general election match-ups: Five Thirty Eight