Is It (Almost) Over?

Senator Obama is giving a major address in Philadelphia Tuesday on race and related matters, trying to bring the media and the people they can alarm so easily back to sanity after their feeding frenzy over Rev. Wright. Judging from the words he spoke in Indiana the other night, he is going to use this as an opportunity to restate his themes and his vision, when a lot of people will be listening. We'll see how it plays out, but if it goes especially well, he may propel himself even further towards the nomination.

With all this time before the next state votes, the pressure has shifted to Hillary and the discomfort of the Democratic party with the spectre of divisive and expensive campaigning that is increasingly unlikely to bring her any closer to the nomination.

In a widely circulated post called The Clinton Civil War, Kos defined the situation in stark terms (reproducing his bold print:)

First of all, the only path to victory for Clinton is via coup by super delegate. She knows this. That's why there's all the talk about poaching pledged delegates and spinning uncertainty around Michigan and Florida, and laying the case for super delegates to discard the popular will and stage a coup. Yet a coup by super delegate would sunder the party in civil war.

Clinton knows this, it's her only path to victory, and she doesn't care. She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.
If the situations were reversed, and Obama was lagging in the delegates, popular vote, states won, money raised, and every other reasonable measure, then I'd feel the same way about Obama. (I pulled the plug early on Dean in 2004.) But that's not the case...

To reiterate, she cannot win without overturning the will of the national Democratic electorate and fomenting civil war, and she doesn't care.

That's why she has earned my enmity and that of so many others. That's why she is bleeding super delegates. That's why she's even bleeding her own caucus delegates (remember, she lost a delegate in Iowa on Saturday). That's why Keith Olbermann finally broke his neutrality. That's why Nancy Pelosi essentially cast her lot with Obama. That's why Democrats outside of the Beltway are hoping for the unifying Obama at the top of the ticket, and not a Clinton so divisive, she is actually working to split her own party."

On this final point, Monday provided additional evidence: a CNN/Opinion Research poll that shows a majority of Democrats favor Obama: 52% of registered Democrats "say the senator from Illinois is their choice for president, with 45 percent supporting Clinton."

But perhaps more to the point, two more stories Monday pointed out that super-delegates trending towards Obama: Chuck Todd at NBC wrote: By our count, the Clinton campaign hasn’t publicly announced the support of a new superdelegate since just after February 5. Indeed, since Super Tuesday, Obama has gained 47 new superdelegates, while Clinton has lost seven (including Eliot Spitzer). Does Clinton have a bigger problem on the superdelegate front than folks realize? Why do we think party leaders -- who saw the Democrats lose governorships, state legislatures, and the control of Congress during the Clinton years -- suddenly jump on board the Clinton campaign? Isn't this the reason the Clinton campaign has only been able to keep uncommitted supers from climbing board Obama's bandwagon but they haven't been able to woo a new super to their side in a month? ? Isn't this also an explanation for why the Clinton campaign has done so poorly in the caucuses? The caucuses are made up of the activists who follow this stuff closer and think about things like electability and who can help the party keep Congress, etc. If Clinton's not winning over caucus activists, why should we believe she'll win over a large enough chunk of superdelegates to overcome Obama's pledged delegate lead?

New York Times online piece calculates the endorsements somewhat differently, but comes to the same conclusion: Obama is getting more than twice as many super-delegates.

Clinton was also predicating her final dash to the nomination on following a big win in PA with victories in the last contests, the re-votes in Michigan and Florida. But Monday, Florida formally threw in the towel--they aren't going to hold any kind of primary or caucus, and leave the whole thing up to the Dem Party credentials committee. Marc Armbinder at the Atlantic sees this as a blow to Clinton's strategy: there will be no big Florida victory in June for Clinton, no huge ending momentum swing, no big reduction in earned delegates.

Michigan has a re-vote plan now being vetted, but it's got problems. Armbinder again says that some 32% of those who voted in the Michigan Republican primary were Democrats and Independents, perhaps voting in their primary because they couldn't vote for Obama (his name wasn't on the ballot) or because they knew the Dem primary didn't count. Now they apparently can't cross back in a re-vote: double jeopardy or something. This may scuttle the plan. Some observers are saying that the two campaigns are already talking about a solution that will allow Florida to be seated--halving the delegates, coming up with a formula for how to proportion the delegates between them, something like that. They may wind up doing that with Michigan, too. In any case, Clinton is unlikely to net many delegates.