The sun sets... on Hillary's campaign?

Above, a pretty sunset in Knoxville. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, Hillary ended up winning by about 142,000. By my armchair calculations, Obama still leads by 35,000 in the count that includes the caucus states, Florida & Michigan, and counts Uncommitted for Obama.

UPDATE: My armchair calculations were a bit off; Real Clear Politics puts Obama's lead in that count at 44,605.

Basically, barring huge upsets in South Dakota and Montana (both in turnout and in result), Clinton will only be the "popular vote winner" in the counts that either: a) give her the benefit of a Soviet-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan, and/or b) exclude and thus effectively disenfranchise the caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, in direct contradiction of her recent statement that "I want to be sure that all 50 states are counted," not to mention her 2007 pledge to snub the Michigan and Florida primaries because of the "unique and special role" played by, among others, Iowa and Nevada, which she now excludes from her count.

Comments

[USC 2L]

I don't really think you can give all of the uncommitted Michigan votes to Obama. A significant number of them were to Edwards. Either way, Hillarious should be taken to task for (1) trying to use a metric that is flawed given the delegate campaign strategy and (2) her laughable positions on Michigan and the caucus states.

[David K.]

USC 2L, what is a more realistic count, that the undeclareds will vote for Obama, or that they all WON'T which is what Hillary would have us believe.

[Sandy Underpants]

Howard Dean should not flip-flop on this issue and make sure that Florida and Michigan count for nothing as Clinton and the DNC proclaimed would be the consequence of moving their primaries up. Anyone who feels disenfranchised with this (and there should be many) ought to take it up with the people in their respective state who caused this to happen, and make sure they get to the polls and have their vote counted in the general election.

[aeromusek]

Brendan, was this you? http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3641644

[Brendan]

Nope. But I'm glad to see I'm not the only one making this point. :)

USC 2L, that's a legitimate point, but you have to realize, we're choosing from a variety of bad options in terms of finding a "popular vote" count that makes some degree of sense. In my view, the most sensible count, and most consistent with the DNC's decision on Florida and Michigan, would be to count Florida in full, but not count Michigan at all. However, for the sake of argument, I'm trying to throw Hillary a freakin' bone and count Michigan somehow, and I think counting Uncommitted for Obama is the least-bad way of doing that.

Your point about Uncommitted voters' intentions is why I earlier mentioned the notion of giving Obama 73% of Uncommitted's vote, which is what exit polls showed his "share" was. However, given that the DNC just awarded him more than his share (on the basis that the election in Michigan was fundamentally flawed) -- and given that it's obvious and undeniable that even 100% of the Uncommitted vote seriously understates Obama's actual level of support in Michigan -- I think that solution is a bit of a stretch. However, if you want to go that route, Obama's 44,605-vote lead becomes a 19,700-vote deficit. But it's quite likely that he will retake the lead, even in that count, on Tuesday.