With results in Indiana and North Carolina showing that Hillary Clinton wasn't going to beat expectations, her increasingly audacious campaign attempted a stunning political sleight of hand. They simply declared that the magic number--the combined pledged and super delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination--had changed. No longer would it take 2,025 votes to claim victory at the convention, as every single living, breathing candidate, combatant, and commentator (not to mention voter) had believed for months. No, the new number would be 2,209. The new benchmark was reached by including the delegates that would have been awarded in Florida and Michigan--if the results from those two states had been counted.
Talk about moving the goal posts.
Tuesday was not a good day for Team Clinton. Most of the gains, not to mention the momentum, that Hillary had earned with her substantial victory in Pennsylvania two weeks ago were wiped out. And with time, primaries, and available delegates leaking away, the campaign was clearly looking for a way to keep the game going.
But the math is still the math, even if you change the rules. Hillary Clinton still trails in both pledged delegates and total votes. She needs to win at least one of those two critical categories if she's going to have any claim on the party's nomination. Let's take a look at the numbers:
Hillary won Indiana, beating Obama by roughly 30,000 votes. But he romped in North Carolina, winning by more than 230,000 votes, for a net gain of at least 200,000 votes--or just a fistful short of Hillary's 215,000 vote pick-up in Pennsylvania. Once again, Obama leads by more than 700,000 total votes. Can Hillary catch him? It's nearly impossible. Looking ahead, even if she wins big victories in West Virginia and Kentucky (states where she is expected to do well) and holds down Obama's margin in Oregon, Montana, and South Dakota (states where history suggests he'll win), she would pick up only about 100,000 votes, nowhere near enough to close the gap.
And what if, as the Clinton campaign is demanding with increasing energy, results from Florida and Michigan are added? If you counted votes cast in both states--without giving Obama any votes out of Michigan, where his name didn't appear on the ballot--she could pull ahead. But no one believes that's going to happen when the rules committee of the DNC meets at the end of May.
The math is even more daunting when you look at the delegates. By most counts, Obama leads by roughly 160 pledged delegates. With only 215 still up for grabs, closing the gap will require a near miracle. She'd have to win something close to 80 percent of those in remaining contests to overtake his lead.
But again, what would happen if you counted the results in Florida and Michigan? If delegates were allocated according to results from the February contests, adding the uncommitted delegates to the Obama column, Hillary would net 32 delegates from Florida and 18 from Michigan, for a total of 50. That would still leave Obama with a 110-delegate lead--and require that she win more half of the pledged delegates in the remaining primaries.
Finally, she could win big among the nearly 300 super delegates who have yet to announce their preference. But if recent weeks are any indication, it's Obama, not Hillary, who's making steady gains there. And unless she blows past him in pledged delegates or total votes (see above) in the coming weeks, there's no reason to expect that will change.
So, yes, there are scenarios where Hillary could overtake Obama's lead in either total votes or pledged delegates. And if she does, she'll have a strong claim on the nomination. In the meantime, she can't just keep moving the goal posts to keep the game going. Time is running out. And even the Clinton campaign's latest iteration of fuzzy math can't change that.
This post was originally published at vanityfair.com, where Myers writes regularly.
Posted May 8, 2008 | 10:58 AM (EST)