Decision ‘08

I’ll Be There When The Last Teardrop Falls

The final shoe has dropped, the final nail is in the coffin: Barack Obama now leads in superdelegates, too.

ABC News’ Karen Travers Reports: For the first time this campaign season, Barack Obama has surpassed Hillary Clinton’s support among superdelegates, according to the ABC News delegate estimate.

Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.

Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., endorsed Obama. DeFazio was previously uncommitted.

With these endorsements, Obama has the support of 267 superdelegates and Clinton has 265 superdelegates.

And yet, there remain a few hardy souls who will not concede that Clinton has no chance, among them the highly-respected Jay Cost:

Elite opinion on the Democratic race has congealed around the idea that it is over. Clinton has no chance whatsoever to win the nomination now. There is a minority of analysts out there - maybe 5%, maybe even less - who see her path to the nomination as much narrower than it was four days ago, but who still see a path.

I’m with the minority on this one. I think she is nearly finished, but not quite yet.

…Two things are holding me back: West Virginia and Kentucky.

The conventional wisdom has it that Clinton did herself major damage Tuesday night by getting blown out in North Carolina. I completely agree. This hurt her with the pledged delegate count. Much more important, I think, is that it hurt her with the popular vote count, which she must win to press an argument with the superdelegates.

However, it is possible that she could counter Tuesday’s blowout with two big blowouts of her own in the next two weeks. This could undo most of the damage done by her big loss in North Carolina, and put her back on track.

Color me unconvinced - back on track for what? She now is losing by every meaningful metric…

3 Responses to “I’ll Be There When The Last Teardrop Falls”

1 too many steves Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 6:17 am
Let’s see what happens when the media reduce their coverage of Hillary because she is not, and has no shot at, being the nominee. I am prompted to say this by a front page article in the NYT today about Obama’s and McCain’s preparation for the fall campaign.
2 Ken Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
good info, i’m hanging on to every word until the dem convention!
3 Ryan Says:
May 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Back on track for losing, which she has been doing since Super Tuesday. This election ended three months ago.