And will remain so unti the day Hillary steps aside.

He remains the insurgent, and thus the challenger, until Hillary gives up.  It all depends on Texas and Ohio.  If Obama can even tie her in one or preferably both of these states, we may see Hillary admit to what would then be inevitable.

I definitely support Obama over Clinton, but she has two big things going for her:

First, delegates will be seated from Michigan and Florida.  Hillary is already complaining that "every vote should count" in oreder to avoid a caucus in those states.  If there is no caucus, then Hillary picks up a net 150 or so delegates.

Second, Bill is twisting the superdelegates arms.  About 400 still remain in play.  Net pickup of 30 or so delegates.

It's going to go down to the wire.  Watch out for the backroom deal.  

If Obama leads amongst pledged delegates, superdelegates will vote for him, no matter how much arm-twisting Bill does.  They won't risk Civil War in the Democratic Party.  I would vote for Hillary if she won fair and square.  But if she gets the nomination through superdelegates even though Obama won more pledged delegates, you best believe that I won't support her.  Hell, I would never write a check to the DNC, DCCC, or DSCC again.

Win it fair and square (and I'm talking about Obama AND Hillary) or forget about a lot of peoples' support.

What if the following circumstances existed after Penn. with respect to the pledged delegates alone:

1. Obama led by fewer than 50 pledged delegates not including Florida, but were Florida included, it would be almost even, but all agred not to seat the delegation.

2. Hillary had won the total popular vote in all primaries by 3 or 4 points, and by 1 or 2 points if you include caucuses (I don't know if the numbers would actually work out like that, but you get the idea), or by slightly more if, again, Florida were included. (Michigan is impossible to include).

3. Hillary wins Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, each by 8+ points.

Now, under those circumstances, would each side be fair in wooing superdelegates to get the nomination? I mean, each side would be able to lay claim to an argument that they have been the majority choice of the party (one by the actual votes, one by an allocation method dependent upon the allocation of delegate votes across the population?

Or, is pledged delegates the bottom line, whether it's 10 or 110?

aznew-

I will bet you a Pepsi that Hillary Clinton does not win Ohio and Texas both by comfortable margins (8+).

How's that sound?

I'm not sure at this point that she will. Despite the polls, the size of Obama's victory in virginia really caught me by surprise, although I should have realized it when Hillary got out of here as early as possible on Tuesday.

But I'll get you the Pepsi anyway. :)

But the number does matter.  I'll be a little pissed, but 10-20 pledged delegate lead for Obama, WITH all that stuff you said above, I'd be willing to reconsider.  I'd still be pissed at how the system is working against the will of the people (Florida 2000, anyone?), but I think I'd be willing to support Clinton.  After all, that'd be pretty close.  But 110?  No way.  If Obama has a lead of 50+ pledged delegates at the end of the day, and does NOT get the nomination, myself, as well as many other Obama Democrats, will sit this one out in protest of a system that ignores the will of the people.

I'm probably at about the same place when it comes to how I think all of this ought to work out, more or less.

Regarding the delegates from Michigan and Florida, the idea that they are going to be seated is not based in reality. The DNC made the rules and neither Howard Dean nor the rest of the Committee has given any indication that they are willing to change them.

It doesn't matter how much Hillary Clinton whines. Whining does not equal Howard Dean changing his mind. He's not a weak man.  The only way that there will be any delegates from those states seated prior to the actual voting will be if those states hold last-minute conventions or caucuses. In which case Obama would have the opportunity to come in there and campaign and Hillary Clinton would then lose those states just as surely as she has lost everything else since Super Tuesday.

The super delegate thing is a pipe dream.  Why would a group of experienced politicians all get together and decide to hand the nomination to the big loser?  Which is what Hillary is now. She has lost 8 elections in a row in landslides and only has more losses on the horizon. That is the definition of a loser. One who loses repeatedly.  Obama has plenty of institutional support within the party now and he's in no way an 'unacceptable' nominee. So long as Obama keeps winning the way that he has, Hillary Clinton has about as much a chance of getting the super delegates to vote for her as I do.  

"delegates will be seated from Michigan and Florida"

First of all, no delegates have been awarded from MI or FL, per DNC rules that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other Democratic candidates agreed to.

Second, how the MI and FL situations ultimately will be resolved is totally up in the air, to be determined by the DNC in negotiation with the state parties.  We've got a looong way to go before any "delegates will be seated from Michigan and Florida."

Third, I cannot believe that under any conceivable circumstances will delegates from FL and MI simply be "seated" without some sort of mutually agreed-upon arrangement.  If they are, it risks destroying the Democratic Party and guaranteeing a Republican victory this year, but probably for years to come.

For those of you who hatehateHATE Robert Novak, please ignore the following.  For those of you (myself included) who don't like the guy, but think he has excellent political insights when he sticks to pure analysis, read on from his latest email:

Amid the exciting windup of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and the mop-up of the Republican contest, the reality is that 2008 shapes up as a very bad year for the GOP. The fact that the Democratic turnout in yesterday's Virginia primary was double the Republican reflects the larger, more boisterous Democratic rallies from Iowa to the Potomac primaries. The pessimism and gloom in the business community is particularly pronounced.

Adding to the dark mood among Republicans is the increasing prospect that they will not be able to bolster their morale by running against the detested Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). Her unification of Republicans has been one of the few GOP assets going into the campaign. It will take time and effort to work up a passion against the likable Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) no matter how leftist he really is.

While the Democratic delegate race looks like a dead heat, all the momentum is with Obama. He showed increasing ability to win white votes yesterday. The Clinton campaign is in disarray with the sacking of the campaign manager and the resignation of the deputy campaign manager, plus the migration of campaign contributors to Obama. Clinton's reliance on the March 4 Ohio and Texas primaries, where her nominal lead is based on out-of-date polls, is risky in the extreme.

on "Why Hillary Will Lose".

Killary made some tactical and strategic errors before Super Tuesday that Obama was able to exploit to his advantage.  Also, her failure to blow Obama away on Super Tuesday basically killed her chances.  I'm reminded of Maurice Gamelin's reply when Winston Churchill asked where the strategic reserve troops were: "there are none."  Hillary had no post-Super Tuesday plan, and the inevitability strategy was shattered forever.

And Morris is also right that her failure to at least attempt to capture the "change" vote is stunning.  It seemed like they were basically betting the whole campaign on crushing Obama on Super Tuesday, and having failed to do so, weren't sure what to try after that.

as usual, rubber lips Novak has a pretty good insight.  Such a dear man.

The artful oppo research gang over at Repub Hqs has recently run a few anti-Obama flags up the pole to see how well they fly.  Among them were of course the Big Deal about his Muslim childhood in Indonesia (or so they painted it), and the dark comments on the slum lord of Chicago... remember Geraldine Ferraro and her husband's real estate deals which the Repubs latched on to?

Another one I found rather interesting was an attempt to paint Obama as almost a hermaphrodite, pointing out how feminine he was, so slender "with long graceful fingers," and so on... I guess they were trying to tap into the misogyny and sexual fixations of so many Republicans, and thus not waste all that attack propaganda about Hillary's cackle and screeching, which became part of the conventional wisdom accepted as fact by Matthews et al. It will be amusing to see how it plays out as they scurry around building their Swift Boat case against the unexpected nominee.