Advantage Obama

Despite the odd hiccup, barring a total collapse of the Obama campaign, one stark truth faces Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination; she cannot hope to overtake Obama’s lead in the number of pledged delegates. Even with her stunning victories last Tuesday, she is unlikely to have dented Obama’s delegate lead by more than a handful. The Clinton campaign quietly acknowledges this inconvenient truth, but is proceeding on the basis of some key assumptions which they believe will make an overwhelming case for the party hierarchy to disregard Obama’s delegate count lead and nominate her instead.

What would make the party leadership do such a thing? Hillary believes that they will have no alternative if, by the time of the convention in August, she has established herself as the candidate most likely to defeat John McCain in November, and if Obama has become damaged goods as a result of having been subjected to a greater degree of scrutiny by the press and the public. To do all this she needs to keep on winning, particularly in the upcoming swing state of Pennsylvania. She also needs the media to keep up their recently acquired appetite for the critical analysis of Obama, his policies, and his friends.

The Democratic party leadership will, of course, clutch at any straw to avoid being put in the position of having to chose between the first female and the first black presidential candidate; they will be especially reluctant to deny the nomination to a black candidate who has secured a majority of the votes cast in the primaries. Therefore, we can expect the Democratic primaries in Florida and Michigan, which were previously deemed invalid by the party, to be rerun in order that the delegates from those two states can participate in the process and, with any luck, get the party grandees off the hook.