Obama's delegate lead is insurmountable

Mathematics don't lie:

As Hillary and Company celebrate yesterday's wins in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island, the reality of their situation will no doubt remain hidden in the shadows of their minds. Oh, they already know the truth, they just aren't quite ready to accept the mathematics of the remaining contests. The simple facts are that, no matter what scenario plays out, Barack Obama's lead in delegates cannot be overcome by the Clinton camp.

Even if Clinton handily wins the remaining 16 primaries AND Michigan and Florida are seated, Obama maintains the upper hand. Several real journalists, unlike myself, have already arrived at this conclusion. Marc Cooper says:

Seven more weeks of campaign slog through Wyoming, Mississippi and into Pennsylvania. And then maybe tack on six more weeks, if you can believe it, into Indiana , West Virginia, and a handful of other states and into Puerto Rico on the 7th of June, quite literally into D-Day. Whatever the outcome, even if Clinton wins all 16 remaining contests -and some of them by veritable landslides, she will still be dozens of elected delegates behind Barack Obama.

She will not be the winner because she will have not won the majority of elected Democratic delegates. Clinton will be exactly where she was the night before Ohio and Texas: in second place and with no way to become the nominee unless enough unelected Superdelegates defy the popular will of the electorate and throw her the nomination (or unless you somehow believe that she can win every coming primary with a 20 point margin).

Jonathon Alter of NewsWeek concurs:

I'm no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I've scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don't look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries. No matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic:

There are a variety of delegate calculation spreadsheets floating around, and I've plugged numbers in all of them, using the red-rosiest scenarios I could contemplate for Clinton. Under a fairly neutral scenario, she needs about 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to catch Obama, assuming she takes half the remaining superdelegates. (A generous assumption, given that his rate of superdelegate acquisition is about four to one right now.) To get 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates, she needs to win about 72 percent of the popular vote in most of the rest of the 18 or so states that haven't voted. Clinton has won, in truth, nearly as many actual votes as Obama, and most of the biggest states. If merit governed the delegate selection process, Clinton would have an equal claim to the nomination. But merit, in this process, is a lower order principle.