Sympathies from the opposite end of the 'frontrunner' divide, which, let's remember, was inscribed in the mass media in the exact opposite direction until the first actual election. Those of us who worked for Obama at basically any point before January understand what it's like to be written off, believe me. (At one point, I think the New York Times referred to "Senator Clinton" and "Mr. Obama" in the same video piece.) So I'm not going to defend the media, since it's not statistically over.

But at the same time it's pretty difficult not to recognize that the odds are getting slimmer and slimmer. The game is far from over, but with every primary it gets closer to the end, and not just in the chronological sense. At this point, most of the indicators are pointing in Obama's favor. Obama has more pledged delegates, he is rapidly closing the gap in superdelegates (which the New York Times puts at eight, and the Obama campaign puts at 6.5), and he is ahead in total delegates. As we both know, this kind of advantage is quite temporal, but Obama is also well ahead in the fundraising game.

There is no reason that these advantages are insurmountable for Clinton, but they do make it extremely unlikely that she will overcome Obama's lead in pledged delegates before the convention (i.e., before any decision is made about MI and FL delegates - which I'll get to shortly). Obama is roughly 170 delegates away from the nomination, depending on whose count you use (I'll use the New York Times for the moment). I can't come up with some methodology to estimate future results that isn't totally specious (and believe me, I tried), but playing around with Slate's delegate calculator and checking it against the most recent polling from the states with upcoming primaries; I gave Hillary hypothetical 60-40 victories in each of the six remaining contests, and Obama still has a hypothetical 124-delegate lead. If this is the delegate total at the convention, it will be difficult for the Clinton campaign to convince superdelegates that they should break with the pledged delegates and swing the nomination over to Clinton.

Which brings us to the debacle over Michigan and Florida. I frankly don't know what I think about the DNC decision to unseat the delegates in the first place, other than that the entirely situation was poorly managed on both ends (i.e., the DNC and the states, given that in light of how the primary actually turned out, Michigan and Florida would have been tremendously important if they'd stayed in their original slots on the nominating calendar). Nor will I get into how I feel about reseating the delegates, since that's probably obvious. The solutions that have been proposed include the following: (a) seat the delegates according to the Florida and Michigan votes as they were held; (b) seat the delegates according to the Florida and Michigan votes as they were held, giving each a half-vote; or (c) seat the delegates but split their votes 50-50 for Clinton and Obama. Each scenario also involves seating superdelegates from Michigan and Florida; this will presumably give some edge to Clinton, but I can't (or, at any rate, won't for the time being) predict how big that margin will be, so I assume it's not game-changing. The third scenario has no effect on the pledged delegate margin, so I'll ignore it. In the first scenario, Florida's delegates would split 105 for Clinton, 67 for Obama, and 13 for Edwards; if we very generously assume that all of the Edwards delegates go for Clinton, she gains a 51-delegate edge, shrinking Obama's margin to 73 delegates (using the 60-40 scenario from above). If all of the uncommitted delegates vote for Obama, then Clinton gets 73 delegates and Obama gets 36, giving her a net gain of 37 and further reducing Obama's edge to 36. This means that, even if Hillary wins every remaining primary by a 60-40 margin and the DNC's rules committee makes the most favorable decision possible for Hillary regarding MI and FL delegates, Hillary can only tie up the race for pledged delegates if every single uncommitted delegate from Michigan votes for her - in any case highly unlikely. In the second scenario, Clinton gains a net 25.5 delegates from Florida, and a net 18.5 delegates from Michigan, reducing Obama's gain by 44 delegates to 80. Obviously this is a very arbitrary 'calculation,' but I think we can agree that I've taken a lot of liberties in Hillary Clinton's favor, and still the best possible result, unless she does even better in the remaining primaries than I've used for these estimates, is a tie in pledged delegates. In this case the game comes down to convincing the remaining undeclared superdelegates that they ought to vote against the majority of pledged delegates, which will be a difficult case for the Clinton campaign to make.

Also, briefly, two factual things. First, whether or not Russert was right to say that the race is over, I think it was reasonable to say that the margin was much less than Clinton needed before full Indiana results were in. Keep in mind that the last counties to report were expected (correctly) to go heavily for Obama. If I remember correctly, the latest ones were Lake County (home of Gary), which went for Obama 56-44, and Monroe County (home of Indiana University Bloomington), which went for Obama 65-35. So it wouldn't be too unreasonable for Russert, reporting at a time when partial results indicated a margin of about four percentage points, to conclude that the margin was going to be very close.

Second, Hillary did win the Texas primary by three and a half percent of the popular vote, but Obama got five more delegates because he won the caucuses. I'm sure you'll agree with me that the system is colossally stupid, but delegates are delegates.

Agreed, Eva. I wouldn't deign to think that the media have, all things considered, treated Barack Obama's campaign any better than they've treated Hillary Clinton's. Further, I don't deny that Clinton's campaign isn't in trouble---your assessments of both the popular vote and the race for delegates is accurate. My point is that the media does not have the right to tell voters that a campaign's over when it's still running. Barack Obama gained a total of twelve pledged delegates yesterday. That isn't enough of a shift to warrant Hillary's concession, and it isn't enough for the media to pressure a still-viable--though longshot--candidate to drop out of a competitive race.