Do the math and keep the faith

(Picture credit: Mark Alan Stamaty, Slate.com)

I have started to hear rumblings of gloom and even rage from fellow Obama supporters since mini Super Tuesday (as I dubbed it) where Sen. Hilary Clinton won the Rhode Island, Ohio and Texas primaries, compared to Obama's Vermont primary and Texas caucus victories.

Peoples - keep the faith. I'm not asking you to do this based just on blind faith, but on cold, hard math.

Lest you doubt me, take a look at this article by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek.

A few of the more delightful excerpts are below.

He leads with this:

Hillary Clinton won big victories Tuesday night in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. But she's now even further behind in the race for the Democratic nomination. How could that be? Math. It's relentless.

To beat Barack Obama among pledged delegates, Clinton now needs even bigger margins in the 12 remaining primaries than she needed when I ran the numbers on Monday—an average of 23 points, which is more than double what she received in Ohio.

Her only slim hope lies in winning the popular vote. But alas...

Clinton's only hope lies in the popular vote—a yardstick on which she now trails Obama by about 600,000 votes. Should she end the primary season in June with a lead in popular votes, she could get a hearing from uncommitted superdelegates for all the other arguments that she would make a stronger nominee (wins the big states, etc.). If she loses both the pledged delegate count and the popular vote, no argument will cause the superdelegates to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters. It will be over.

He then presents a dream (for the Clintonistas) scenario in which Hilary takes all the remaining races.

In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week. That's 12 victories in a row, bigger in total than Obama's run of 11 straight. And this time I've assigned her even larger margins than I did before in Wyoming, North Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky.

So here we go again:

Let's assume that on Saturday in Wyoming, Clinton's March 4 momentum gives her an Ohio-style 10-point win, confounding every expectation. Next Tuesday in Mississippi, where African-Americans play a big role in the Democratic primary, she shocks the political world by again winning 55-45.

Then on April 22, the big one—Pennsylvania—and it's a Clinton blowout: 60-40, with Clinton picking up a whopping 32 delegates. She wins both of Guam's two delegates on May 3 and Indiana's proximity to Illinois does Obama no good on May 6. The Hoosiers go for Clinton 55-45 and the same day brings another huge upset in a heavily African-American state. Enough blacks desert Obama to give North Carolina to Hillary in another big win, 55-45, netting her seven more delegates.May 13 in West Virginia is no kinder to Obama, and he loses by double digits, netting Clinton two delegates. Another 60-40 landslide on May 20 in Kentucky nets her 11 more. The same day brings Oregon, a classic Obama state. Ooops! He loses there 52-48. Clinton wins by 10 in Montana and South Dakota on June 3 and the scheduled primary season ends on June 7 in Puerto Rico with another big Viva Clinton! Clinton pulls off a 60-40 landslide, giving her another 11 delegates.

Given that I've put not a thumb but my whole fist on the scale, this fanciful calculation gives Hillary the lead, right? Actually, it makes the score 1,625 to 1,584 for Obama. A margin of 39 pledged delegates may not seem like much, but remember, the chances of Obama losing state after state by 20-point margins are slim to none.

Now, Clinton is unlikely to win Wyoming. Its immediate geographical and ideological neighbours of North Dakota, Colorado, Utah, Nebraska and Idaho have all gone for Obama in healthy doses. A little further across the mid-west, Kansas and Iowa have also gone for Obama. Those mid-west white folks seem to either love Obama or loathe Hilary - or perhaps both.

And then Mississippi - Hilary can expect to be trounced in the blackest state in the Union - 37% of Mississippi's population is black and we know how that has gone.

For North Carolina and West Virginia, the results of the South Carolina and Virginia contests should be instructive. And so on.

So the pure, unspun truth is this - barring some cataclysmic mis-step by Obama that turns everyone off in massive numbers, Clinton cannot surpass his delegate count. And the DNC head honchos, though some may be beholden to the Clinton, are not stupid. If they give her the nomination through super-delegate votes or through allowing the Michigan and Florida delegates to be seated as is, they know it will damage the party. They are not so suicidal as to want to risk all of their own fortunes for Clinton alone. She is not that powerful. And after she loses this nomination, she will no longer be the force in the party she once was. The Clinton era will draw to a close.

So to my fellow Obama supporters, I say again - be calm and be not disturbed.