Hilary's Hope

Hildog's plan, back when she was the inevitable candidate awaiting her eventual coronation, was to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

Hilary's problem, right now when she's reduced to throwing a kitchen sink, is that it didn't work.

Thanks to the same proportional delegation that keep him from finishing this race off, Obama slipped through that Tuesday holding her margins of victory down enough to be within striking distance. Since, he's piled up an near unassailable lead in delegates and voters. Clinton would have to win the remaining primaries with nearly a 2:1 voter ratio just to pull even with him.

Hilary's strategy now is to throw the convention into chaos.

Her only hope is to damage Obama so much that some slip, some gaffe, some controversy will strike and his candidacy will be fundamentally crippled. Then, on the floor of the convention, with neither her nor her opponent having managed to amass the magical 50%+1 number of delegates (Which shifts depending on what happens with the MI and FL delegates, of course.). Then, she can convince enough superdelegates (Scare, really. Just looking at the message she's sending with Richardson. "You broke my heart." Cross her and it's the kiss of death.) to break for her that she'll win the nomination.

That's it, that's the only plausible route to the presidency for her now. All the complaining about revotes in Michigan and the prevarication about Bosnian snipers. It's all about keeping the process in doubt long enough for that chaos to reign and the Clintonian arm-twisting machine to have its day.

Which is exactly why this bullshit about Clinton

More to the point, though, that's not what the rules say. You don't get to throw out the rulebook and propose your own system because you don't like the way the game's unfolded. The Democratic nominee is not decided under electoral college rules but under a proportional system that's weighted towards areas that have been consistently Democratic in the past. You can argue that's not the way it should be, that perhaps we could deal with some reform, but that doesn't change the results in this race. It's only clouding the issue. Under the rules, Obama is winning. He hasn't won yet but I don't think the Clinton campaign would be touting this kind of spin if they were in a similarly commanding position.

Anyway, in the interest of fairness here's a Clinton supporter making a counterpoint :