Barack Obama is perhaps 70-90 delegates away from hitting the magic number of  2,026 (now that Travis Childers and Don Cazayoux are now in Congress). However, NBC News and CNN report that Obama has now clinched a majority of the pledged delegates, surpassing the 1,627 mark. What's more, assuming Obama is able to secure 30 delegates out of Oregon (which seems likely at this juncture given the spread in the state), Obama will have clinched a majority of pledged delegates including Michigan and Florida (assuming a halving of the states' delegations, which Chuck Todd is reporting is a likelihood).

What does this mean? Obama has not clinched the Democratic nomination, though his seemingly inexorable move towards securing the nomination was not slowed tonight. Nevertheless, Obama now has a claim to the majority of the pledged delegates under almost any scenario, meaning that the cadre of superdelegates pledging their support to the winner of the pledged delegate battle could move to Obama, and soon.

Sen. Obama's acceptance of Jack Johnson's support and even calling it helpful has made the case for Sen. Clinton to take her case to the Democratic Convention in Denver. Earlier in the process, the Obama campaign was squealing so loudly about Ickes trying to get pledged delegate to switch that one would think it was the end of the world. His win at all cost mentality has now begun to haunt him.

He has gone back to wearing a poll tested flag pin, with not one, but two flags. He went back on his IL vote for the gas tax so he could call Hillary a panderer. He stated that all states matter, but he is not planning an election night speech tonight to that the people in West Virginia who voted for him. While I do understand the strategy, it smacks of politics as usual. Where is the new politics he promised?

Sen. Clinton is not as far behind as Kennedy was when he went to the convention. She and Sen. Obama are extremely close. They both need superdelegates to arrive at the magic number. Plus ther is nothing in the rules from taking the fight all the way to the convention. Obama opened the door to a challenge which I hope she accepts.

Let them leave it all on the floor in Denver.

The one single thing most likely to lose Obama the election has just occurred ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202554. html?referrer=digg

One of Hillary's PLEDGED DELEGATES defected to Obama.

How is this bad for Obama you say?

It opens up every PLEDGED DELEGATE to insider politics.

If that occurs Obama may face a situation where its insider politics and the party chooses who the party wants.

Hillary Clinton has the majority of the Democratic party votes.

This cycle is stranger and stranger and stranger...

Cross-posted at DailyKos.

Yesterday (Wednesday), the Michigan Democratic Party Executive Committee voted to propose a compromise to the DNC rules committee for seating Michigan delegates (the rules committee meets May 31). They are proposing to award 69 pledged delegates to Clinton and 59 pledged delegates to Obama.

There are several indicators that this compromise may have the approval of the Obama campaign, including the Obama campaign making positive statements about the delegate deal itself, and Axelrod and other Obama advisors saying that Obama will wrap up the nomination May 20th.

Join me after the jump...

Hillary Clinton has finally gotten a clear path to winning the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. There is no other path, she has only one road to victory.
It will take three-steps:

1) LIE
Lie by claiming that the election is not about pledged delegates, but popular votes.

(OK, so you've lied and changed the measurement to popular votes. unfortunately, she's still losing, BIGTIME. so you have to go to Step Two...)

2) CHEAT

Cheat by claiming you are ahead in popular votes. do this by NOT counting all the voters in caucus states, but DO count votes in noncontested primaries in Michigan and Florida.

(OK, you've lied and cheated, but there's still the pesky insurmountable pledged delegate lead to overcome. she does this in Step Three...)

3) STEAL

Steal the Democrtatic nomination for president by getting the Superdelegates to OVERTURN THE WILL OF VOTERS IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND CAUSCUSES.  
Hey, the Superdelegates were put in place for EXACTLY this reason, to steal the nomination in case a non-establishment candidate was chosen by the voters.

Yep, it's that simple.
and it's her only path to victory. luckily for her, she is very good at all three tactics, so this should be a piece of cake.

All she needs now to make the plan work is a bunch of corrupt, dishonest, and shameful Democrats to follow her down her sordid path...

hmmmm...
i wonder where she'll find those...?

So let's start with the observation that, barring some huge and unexpected event, neither candidate can realistically win the nomination without the help of a fair number of super-delegates.  This in turn means that a lot of what's left to be done in this race consists of making moral arguments to super-delegates to garner support.  

One of these arguments, and the argument obviously favored by the Obama camp, says that super-delegates are obligated to support whoever amasses the most pledged-delegates.  That a pledged-delegate lead, however small, reflects the will of the Democratic electorate and that to vote for anyone but the pledged-delegate leader would be to overturn the will of the people.  

But another, quite plausible position insists that super-delegates are, instead, obligated to support whichever candidate leads in the popular vote.  There's a strong case to be made for the claim that the popular vote reflects the will of the Democratic electorate far better than pledged-delegate tallies (though I'm going to leave that case for another entry), and if super-delegates want to avoid overturning the popular will, they should look the popular vote tallies in making their decision.  

Obama is taking Clinton at her word that pledged delegates are in play and taking strong measures to ensure pledged delegates are loyal. The Obama campaign cut 900 prospective delegates from the running for this weekend's California Democratic Convention based on questions of allegiance and an overabundance of prospective delegates. Newspaper reports vary for the Clinton cuts, from 36 to 50.

The Obama campaign must be worried about pledged delegates if they are taking these kinds of measures to control who becomes a pledged delegate in California. I believe this is an indicator that Clinton is serious about her threat to disregard the will of the voters by stealing pledged delegates. By now, you've probably heard what Clinton has said about pledged delegates, but just in case you haven't, here is the infamous pledged delegate quote from Sen. Clinton:

Pledged delegates in most states are not pledged. You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They're just like superdelegates.

I guess that depends on your definition of the word pledged.

(please note, corrected numbers) Okay, a little envelope math.

Pledged delegates: 3251
Superdelegates: 793

Total delegates: 4047
Total needed to be the nominee: 2024

Obama's pledged total: 1414
Clinton's pledged total: 1243

(numbers taken from CNN)

All that is straightforward, we know all that.  But the significant thing here is that the superdelegates who are remaining neutral are looking for a good reason to endorse one candidate over another; they don't want to risk their own political careers by going against the leader as assigned by the people.  We all know how Democrats feel about that.