Guest post by Grey
Sen. Obama’s campaign is doing all it can to diminish the importance of the next few primaries and, despite the media’s catcalls for Sen. Clinton to get out of the race, the contest in West Virginia is real, and it could bolster Clinton’s case for the nomination. Jerome Armstrong has a suggestion:
If you can’t stand the heat of the West Virginia primary, stay out of the kitchen. [...]
The following week, Barack Obama has planned a party to claim the nomination in Portland, based on his own campaigns measurement. He can say whatever he wants, but it’s an insult to intelligence to believe it until it happens by the rules. As Howard Dean has said many times, MI and FL are going to be resolved and seated. Obama has now agreed with that position. Like it or not, the working number of delegates is 2209. There’s not a rule that says if you get a plurality of the pledged delegates, you win.
The Obama campaign will declare that there’s never been a candidate denied the election who had the most pledged delegates. True. But has there been a candidate denied the nomination whose had the most votes? I don’t think so. But neither of those metrics matters. 2209, or whatever the number is after the resolution of MI and FL happens to be, is all that matters. Until then, we don’t have a nominee.
One imagines that the recalcitrance of some to focus on these facts is arguably related to the very real possibility that, in West Virginia, Sen. Clinton is poised to humiliate Sen. Obama. Playing ostrich and declaring victory won’t change that fact, nor will it distract enough of us from another very real metric: the popular vote.
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