Hillary Clinton’s victories in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island have given her flailing campaign a lift, but barring a major political earthquake she’ll still finish behind Barack Obama when theprimaries conclude in June.
Clinton was jubilant Wednesday, and with good reason. Obama victories in Texas and Ohio would have knocked her out of the race and she managed to stop Obama’s momentum, which had virtually eliminated her double-digit lead in both of those states in recent weeks. She beat Obama by four points in Texas and 10 points in Ohio.
“We defied the odds last night,” Clinton said in an e-mail to supporters Wednesday. “And with our stunning victories, the momentum is now all on our side.”
But the delegate math still favors Obama, who leads in elected delegates by more than 100 by most estimates.
Not only will Clinton have to find a way to eliminate Obama’s elected delegate lead, she will have to halt the daily flow of “superdelegates” into the Obama camp as he begins to catch up to her edge in that category. Some estimates give Clinton 240 superdelegates to Obama’s 197. The Obama campaign Wednesday added the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, to its superdelegate tally as well as the Georgia Democratic Party chairman.
About half of the 795 superdelegates remain unpledged and Clinton campaign aides have been trying to convince the undecided to hold off on making up their minds in an effort to win them over.
“We have talked to an awful lot of them in the past week,” Clinton adviser Harold Ickes said Wednesday. “Given the results from last night, many, many of the uncommitted delegates are waiting.”
Ten primaries and two caucuses remain, with 747 elected delegates up for grabs. Neither candidate will capture the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination by June.
“I think the odds are still against Clinton rather strongly of her catching up,” said University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala.
Instead, Clinton will have to convince the Democratic Party to include delegates from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic convention. Clinton won both states but the candidates did not campaign in either state and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.
Clinton would also need to convince the unpledged superdelegates to support her, despite Obama’s elected delegate lead. But some see such a move as potentially damaging to the party and thus unlikely.
“I have a hard time believing that if Obama has a lead in delegates elected via primaries and caucuses that superdelegates are going to ignore that,” Scala said. “Even though the Clintons are powerful within the party, that seems to me like a more powerful argument.”
