Three Ways for Hillary to Win

She can't win by getting more pledged delegates than Obama can, so her choices are to win the popular vote, get the delegates (and votes) from Michigan and Florida, and beat Obama's credibility to a pulp:

FRESH from her victories in three out of four states last week and surging back in the national polls, Hillary Clinton has crafted a new strategy for winning the Democratic nomination which she believes will legitimise her claim to be president.

Clinton thinks she can win a majority of the popular vote in primaries and caucuses, even if she cannot overtake Barack Obama, her rival, in the number of “pledged” delegates who will vote to choose the candidate at the Democratic national convention in August.

The New York senator has unnerved Obama, who has been left reeling by a series of errors from senior policy advisers. The two opponents face an ugly six-week battle in the run-up to a potentially pivotal primary in Pennsylvania next month.

Democrats boosted Obama in Wyoming last night in state caucuses that gave the Illinois senator a comfortable victory. With almost all votes tallied he beat Clinton by 59% to 40%.

“The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach,” he said. “She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different.”

Bradley believes that Clinton will stop at nothing to tear down Obama even if it boosts John McCain, who was confirmed last week as the Republican nominee: “The Clintons do not do long-term planning. They’re total tacticians and right now their focus is on Obama, not McCain.”

Hillary may fail to win, but she will succeed in giving John McCain amply ammunition to use against Obama (should he decide that he really wants to win).

According to Dick Morris' calculations, even if Hillary wins all of the remaining contests by 10 points, she will only have a net gain of about 60 delegates. Since Obama will still have a lead of upwards of 80-100 in this scenario, she still can't come to the convention with a lead in delegates.

Should she manage to pass him in popular vote, it might make a nice talking point, but just like in the general election the national popular vote is meaningless. The only thing that counts is how the candidates did in each state. She's sort of going for the Al Gore 2000 argument that he should have been president just because he won more popular votes.

There really is no path to the nomination for Hillary that won't involve subterfuge and sleight-of-hand, and that will be guaranteed to create a massive uproar among Obama supporters. I'm already reading comments on other sites about the uprising that will occur if the "establishment" takes the nomination from Obama. Chicago '68 may ending up looking like a Sunday School picnic.

Boy, would I like to have a ticket to the convention in Denver...