A report in the New York Times this morning lays it out.
... Despite a series of trials that have put Mr. Obama on the defensive and illustrated the burdens he might carry in a fall campaign, the Obama campaign is rolling along, leaving Mrs. Clinton with dwindling options.
Mr. Obama continues to pick up the support of superdelegates — elected Democrats and party leaders — at a quicker pace than Mrs. Clinton.
That could change, but Obama has survived Wright and race and other WMD's.
Although Mrs. Clinton has cut into Mr. Obama’s popular vote lead, it would be difficult for her to overtake him without counting the disputed results in Florida and perhaps Michigan.
What's going to happen with Florida and Michigan? Does anyone still think Clinton will come away from that decision with a win? It's unlikely. So we're left with the undecided super delegates.
They suggest that they are more sympathetic to the argument that they should follow the will of the voters as expressed by the delegates amassed by the candidates when the primary season is done rather than following Mrs. Clinton’s admonitions to select the candidate they think would best be able to defeat Senator John McCain and the Republicans in November.
Clinton has enjoyed a surge lately and Obama's been falling behind. The media are on the attack and he's not altogether over the Wright mess. On the other hand, the numbers continue to favor Obama.
A big Clinton victory in Indiana on Tuesday and in West Virginia the next week could, combined with her victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio, give her ammunition to say that Mr. Obama would fail to draw blue-collar support against Mr. McCain in the fall.
David Plouffe, the manager of Mr. Obama’s campaign, said that if Mrs. Clinton won 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates — an assumption he called “overly generous” — she would still need about two-thirds of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers did not dispute Mr. Plouffe’s calculation, in effect acknowledging the enormousness of their task.
One of those super delegates, Joe Andrew, who just the other day switched his vote from Clinton to Obama thinks Obama has shown some real grit in how he deal with the Wright "crisis."
“What’s happened here is how he has handled each one of these crises — because you know there are going to be crises — has made him an even stronger candidate,” Mr. Andrew said.
Mr. Obama has also picked up superdelegate support from Democratic members of Congress in relatively conservative districts — despite efforts by Republicans to make Mr. Obama a liability for Democrats running in competitive districts, including campaigns for two open seats in the South that are under way.
Clinton has to win Indiana -- "decisively," as they say, meaning anymore than one vote over "expectations." Her campaign staff have made it clear that Clinton isn't giving up any time soon. They're aiming at Indiana and then some "surprises," like Oregon and Montana wins.
One of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, Geoff Garin, said the campaign hoped to end the primary season on June 3 lifted by a series of victories, and by coming close in the pledged delegate totals and the popular vote — though he declined to say what close would be.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Mr. Garin said.
Moving the goal posts always gives a temporary lift of the spirits, as Bush and Cheney knew all too well.
