The apparent collapse of planned new votes in Florida and Michigan could push victory on a key symbolic measure — the primary season popular vote — beyond Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s grasp.
Clinton’s top supporters, including her husband, have suggested in recent days that amassing more votes than Sen. Barack Obama, while it has no formal meaning, could offer a key rationale for laying claim to the nomination. The theory: Winning the popular vote might give party leaders known as superdelegates a reason to take the nomination away from Obama, who is virtually sure to earn more pledged delegates.
"If Sen. Obama wins the popular vote then the choice will be easier. But if Hillary wins the popular vote but can't quite catch up with the delegate votes, then you have to just ask yourself, 'Which is more important, and who is more likely to win in November?'” former President Bill Clinton told ABC earlier this week.
So can Hillary Clinton nail the popular vote? Ben Smith continues:
... It’s assuming a lot to give Clinton anything but the slimmest of chances to lead in the popular vote. It’s impossible to project turnout in the 10 states and territories left to vote, but Clinton will have to close a deficit of more than 700,000 votes. That means, even with extremely high turnout estimates, she would have to win by huge, double-digit percentages in the states where she could have an edge — Pennsylvania and West Virginia — while holding Obama to tiny gains in states such as North Carolina and Oregon, where he is heavily favored.
Without those blowouts, many influential Democrats contend, she will find it hard to convince superdelegates of a legitimate victory.
Right. But what about Pennsylvania? Couldn't that change everything?
In Pennsylvania, for instance, more than 1.2 million Democrats turned out for the last contested Democratic primary, the 2002 governor’s race. Given the higher interest, Democratic operatives there — who declined to be quoted speculating — said they could imagine the vote getting as high as 2 million.
Under that, highly optimistic scenario, an unprecedented blowout for Clinton — a margin of 20 percent, for instance — would give her 400,000 more votes in the state, and still leave her with more than 300,000 to make up.
Clinton has a real uphill battle.
Clinton has broken 56 percent in just four states, including her home state of New York. Her two best states have been Rhode Island, where she topped 58 percent, and Arkansas, where she won more than 70 percent of the votes.
Now her path to victory seems to depend on all her future wins going the way of Arkansas.
That's quite an assignment.