Just Better and Better

Slate's delegate counter notes that "Going into this evening's results, Clinton needs an average margin of victory of 16 points in every remaining primary to tie Obama's pledged delegate total." Otherwise, of course, she's got to convince superdelegates to vote un-democratically, i.e., against the expressed wishes of a majority of Democratic voters.

The only method to secure such a result, it would seem, is to offer the superdelegates a very strong reason to decide that Obama is objectively unsuitable for the job or unlikely to win it, which in turn requires the running of a highly negative campaign. If the gambit succeeds, Hillary gets the nomination and generates even more ill-will among key Democrat constituencies she'd need in the fall. If it fails, she's still worked Barack over pretty nicely for John McCain, and generated plenty of discord in the Democratic Party.

If I were a Democrat, who had started the year with two candidates I loved and every confidence that victory in November was a near certainty, I'd be ripping my hair out by the roots about now.