Updated: And now for the Clinton comeback?

The first Super Tuesday checked Obama's momentum--but then he recovered with 11 straight wins in the following contests. That second remarkable surge had his campaign hoping for a knockout blow today--and even had many commentators calling for Hillary to withdraw. The Clinton campaign, playing the expectations game with some success, is now getting ready to deem anything but a clean sweep by Obama in the second Super Tuesday a setback for him. On the face of it, that seems absurd, but if Hillary wins comfortably in Ohio, and holds Obama to a draw in Texas--which is what the late polls are pointing to--the momentum will be back with her going into Pennsylvania, and this thing is by no means over.

Note that what follows is laid out in much more detail by the excellent Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics. This is just an abridged version of his analysis here and here. His line seems dead right to me.

The ceaseless focus on the elected delegates exaggerates the difficulty Hillary faces in turning this around. Unless Obama buries Hillary today--and the polls say that won't happen--this race will go on, and it will turn in the end not on the ordinary delegates, but on the superdelegates. The question is, how will they decide which candidate to back? There are several scenarios, but the most likely is that they will be swayed by the popular vote. If Hillary can get ahead of Obama in the popular vote, she will have a strong moral claim to the support of the superdelegates. With the race for ordinary delegates inconclusive whatever happens in the remaining primaries, competition for the popular vote is the race that matters.

As of this morning, Hillary was behind roughly 52-48 in the popular vote. With the states remaining, she can still turn that around. Essentially she needs big winning margins--but not huge winning margins--in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania combined. That might not put her ahead in the elected-delegate count, but if she ends up ahead in the popular vote she can hope to get the superdelegates on side. The necessary winning thresholds for a lead in the popular vote depend on whether you take Michigan and Florida into account. Without those states (disqualified, for now, from the elected-delegate count) Hillary needs to win more than 55 percent of the popular vote, starting today, in all the remaining states taken together. If you include Florida (where Obama was at least on the ballot, unlike in Michigan) she needs to win more than 53 percent. If you include both Florida and Michigan (which would seem indefensible, though that will not trouble Hillary) the requirement shrinks to 52 percent. Reaching even the most demanding of those thresholds is hardly impossible.

Obama is still the favorite--and will remain the favorite unless Hillary crushes him today (in absolute terms, not relative to expectations). But if she does enough to stop the Obama momentum again, she will have a fighting chance of emerging the eventual winner. And, as Hillary never tires of saying, she is nothing if not a fighter.

Update:

This piece by Jonathan Alter goes through the delegate arithmetic. On the assumptions he describes--which are indeed quite favorable to Hillary--she can't catch Obama on the elected-delegate count. But consider this paragraph:

So 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.

"Reverse the will of the people." But what if these assumptions put Hillary ahead in the popular vote? I can't run those numbers, and they depend in any case on further assumptions about turn-out. (Jay, help me.) But I'm guessing that the scenario Alter describes could be enough to put Hillary in front on the popular vote (especially if you include Florida). In which case, it would be Obama, not her, who could be accused of using the superdelegates to reverse the will of the people.

This is still unlikely, because Alter's assumptions do, as he says, lean heavily in Hillary's favor. But the point is, she can lose the elected-delegate count and win the popular vote--and that, in the end, may be the vote that matters most.

Comments

From a friend in the know.

EARLY EXITS:

OH: 58 Clinton, 37 Obama, 4 JRE
TX: 56 Clinton, 43 Obama

Disclaimer: This is only first round of EE polling, so beware, HRC #'s could be lower, or even higher. Either way looking very good for hillary.....

Posted by James M | March 4, 2008 3:41 PM

HOw does one divine the popular vote out of caucuses? As I understand it, the caucuses (1) may allow a person to vote twice (Texas), (2) are the only way to vote (wash) or (3) don't necessarily represent the popular vote (in Ohio the caucus keeps voting until a candidate gets the majority, so Obama may have been a third choice).

I'm not sure about this stuff, but maybe a Democratic cultist might know the inner secrets of that party's democratic machinery.

Posted by Béziers | March 4, 2008 5:44 PM

"If Hillary can get ahead of Obama in the popular vote, she will have a strong moral claim to the support of the superdelegates."

Exactly! And I have yet to hear this strategy mentioned on national television. I am sorry but the media's fixation on Obama's delegate lead only feeds my notion that there is latent bias against Clinton. The media is overcompensating for giving Bush a free pass on the run up to the Iraqi invasion.

Nonetheless, as Hillary Clinton primary voter, I still believe that Obama has proven to be a better candidate--specially since she decided to echo the policies of Lou Dobbs and other economic analphabets.

Posted by Luis A. del Valle | March 4, 2008 8:13 PM

Hillary would have to win, on average, more than 60% of the vote in the remaining states to win.

If one state is 41% for Obama and 59% for Clinton she will lose the presidency.

I think it's wishful thinking to imagine Hillary winning this. ...But I applaud you for that.

Btw, someone made a site for people who can't do math. It calculates delegates, here's the url...

http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/

Posted by Brien | March 5, 2008 12:44 AM

Here's the problem. Hillary has an outside shot at catching up in votes. But that scenario -- today -- still seems unlikely. She might win PA. But she's equally likely to lose MS, NC, and IN by margins that match whatever she might win PA by. She might be on the road to closing the gap. But she's not likely to close it. (Don't forget, Alter's scenario is meant to be most favorable to Clinton -- but it's also a complete fantasy, he has her winning places where she's not going to win).

So it's skethy as heck -- today -- to think she's going to even meet the popular vote criteria. And here's the rub. She achieved her results tonight by going massively negative. She's already handed McCain a video (her saying that McCain has the experience to answer the phone and Obama does not) to use in the GE. Tonight, in his acceptance speech, McCain is already calling attention to her divisiveness, her lowball politics and positioning her as a move back to the past. And the only way she can continue to get these results is to play right into that. So it's lose-lose. She comes into the GE as the nominee who has shown that she'll pursue a scorched earth policy to win. Or Obama survives and comes in after weeks and weeks of negative attacks from Clinton.

AND continuing the election gives McCain several weeks to campaign against the democrats. Define them. Position himself. Raise money. Get an organization together.

No wonder the Republicans are so happy about the results tonight.

Is this a price worth paying in order to give Hillary a shot at overcoming very long odds on making a case for herself?

And for what? We all agree that there's little difference between the candidate in terms of their positions and so on.

The scenario we're looking at tonight seems to be the one that gives the Republicans the best possible case for winning the white house. No small feat in a year when it should have been a slam dunk for the Democrats.

Posted by Maggie | March 5, 2008 2:02 AM

I disagree that the long primary is bad for Democrats. Obama has Dems fired up as never before. Democratic primary turnout is _double_ that of Republicans, even in so-called "Red States" such as Texas and Virginia. Having a contested primary makes people perceive that their participation counts, and therefore they participate. This is how Democrats win.

As Sen. Clinton points out, her husband did not secure the Democratic nomination until June. He then went on to win the presidency. Either Democrat (hopefully Obama) will come out of this with a well-oiled national GOTV apparatus, and milllions and millions of recently-activated Democrats with the taste of blood in their mouths.

Posted by Phoney Baloney | March 5, 2008 2:22 AM

The main problem isn't the long nomination battle per se, it's a long nomination battle when one participant can only get good results by pursuing the kitchen sink strategy. She's argued that John McCain is more qualified to be commander-in-chief than is Obama. So if he wins, his battle against McCain is much steeper. Conversely, Obama's success has been on the promise of a new-style politics. If Clinton win, McCain can beat up Hillary for having won by playing the old-style gutterball of the Clinton era. Either way it's a disaster for the Democrats.

And even if it weren't going to be an *ugly* protracted battle, the protracted battle is also not obviously good. Obama already has an impressive GOTV/fund-raising organization. I'll give you that another week or two of seasoning on how to weather hardball attacks won't be terrible. But it will be terrible if it goes on for MONTHS.

And that's not even getting to the bitterness that one side or the other will feel at the end of a protracted battle.

Bottom line: The winner tonight was the Republicans. Limbaugh got everything he wanted.

Posted by Maggie | March 5, 2008 3:11 AM

This isn't rocket science. An Obama vs. McCain general election would always be an inexperience vs. experience and a judgment-based election. McCain would bring up the '3am' question in a much more direct way with his years of military and civil service, and he would dismiss Obama's claim that he can best unite this country by comparing Obama's lack of coalition-building and liberal/divisive voting record with McCain's own reputation as the most bipartisan/independent-thinking leader in Congress. In this way, McCain would be well-poised to compare his credentials for superior experience and judgment to Obama - so why should overly-idealistic Democrats be forced to find this out the hard way? Why shouldn't the democrats weight experience and judgment now before settling on their candidate? How could weighing experience and judgment ever be detrimental to a party? The Republican attacks will far surpass the weak mention of Obama's relative inexperience and Obama's corruption ties to Rezko that have been raised in the primary. The reason we have a primary process is so these things are addressed early and weighed before we are stuck with a flawed nominee. If you are an Obama fan, good that all this is raised now so you can develop your answers well before it becomes a central issue in the general election. If you are a Hillary fan, you don't think a compelling response can possibly emerge for these fundamental flaws and that is why you believe she will triumph in the primary process as "buyers remorse" settles in and liberal voters sober up and realize the reality that Obama is just another politician and not the superior candidate to take on McCain. Either way, don't rush the process of democracy - it exists for a reason.

Posted by Jim | March 5, 2008 8:00 AM