Does Clinton now have a chance?

Now that the rules committee has closed the Obama lead and Clinton dominated Puerto Rico does she have a chance of securing the nomination? She certainly would appear to be picking up momentum, but the simple fact is this race is over. There simply aren't enough delegates left for Clinton to win this election.

Obama stands a mere 48 delegates away from the nomination. That number will probably shrink to about 45 or 46 once the Puerto Rico delegates are completely apportioned. 47 delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday. Then it all comes down to super delegates. If Obama has a horrible showing on Tuesday he should still get at least 15 or 16 delegates, which would knock his remainder required to about 30. A decent or good day will result in a deficit of more like 20 or 25. Lets run with the 30 figure though.

Obama would need 30 super delegates to join his cause to take the nomination. There are about 200 super delegates remaining. It is simply unfathomable that Clinton will take 80%+ of the remaining super delegates. Why would she? Is there any reason to think these super delegates are so far away from the mainstream that they overwhelming favor Clinton? No, of course not. If anything the reasonable split of these delegates is 50-50, or skewed towards Obama. These are the people who have waited the longest to decide which means 1 of 2 things. Either they are truly undecided, which would make the 50-50 outcome likely, or they are simply going to follow the popular or electoral vote which would favor Obama. There is simply no principled reason to see these delegates breaking in Clinton's favor. The 1 exception being if they wanted the race to narrow first so they could justify a counter-majoritarian choice. Even if that is true of some of the super delegates, one cannot imagine that it would be so pervasively true that she would pick up 80% or more of the super delegates remaining. The simple fact is Clinton is dead in the water, and should get out of the race for the good of the party and the country.

Lest anyone read too much into Puerto Rico and the huge Clinton win let me disabuse you of the notion that it means anything at all. Clinton won because by and large Puerto Ricans are apathetic to the race b\c they don't get to vote in the general election. Understandable, although I would be even more encouraged to vote given that it is my only one, you can see why someone would think if we don't want their input when it matters most then they won't take the scraps of the primary vote. In any event, given the excessively low turnout (only 350k of the more than 2 million eligible to participate) the deciding factor became Bill Clinton. Hillary won those who have a favorable opinion of Bill (more than 80% of those who voted) by 56% points over Obama. Obama won those who had an unfavorable opinion of Bill. This is not a nationwide trend or a change in Hillary's fortunes. This is merely a vote of a territory that has not followed the race and is voting as many places would have 2 years ago before they got to know Barack and Hillary better. The polls 2 years ago should Hillary walking away with the nomination, P.R. hasn't followed the race closely, so not surprisingly they still adhere to that past, frozen in time if you will...which is bad news for Hillary if she thought this could be a turning point.