Joining the Team

"Clinton has made a huge comeback in the fourth quarter. Beginning with her victories in Texas and Ohio and going through last night's win in Kentucky, she has won 6,505,231 votes to Obama's 5,983,422 -- a margin of 521,809 votes. That number will likely grow after the remaining contests in Puerto Rico (where she has a significant lead), South Dakota, and Montana. At the moment, counting all four quarters, Obama has a popular-vote lead of 123,033 votes. By the end of the day on June 3, Clinton might well be ahead.

"If that happens, she will be the Al Gore of the Democratic primaries: the winner of the popular vote who lost the election. But unlike Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential race because of the constitutional requirements of the Electoral College, Clinton will lose because of the Democratic party's arcane -- and changeable -- rules of delegate allocation."

Everyone's taken a whack at Hillary's biggest mistakes. John Judis takes his turn in the New Republic:

"Critics within the campaign have singled out Clinton's decision to run in 2007 as the heir apparent. That was important, but nothing compared to the way she handled the issue of the Iraq war and the possibility of war with Iran. During the campaign's first year--before the Iowa caucus in January--the principal, and perhaps only, way that her opponents (particularly Obama) could undercut her candidacy was through criticizing her support of the resolution authorizing the Bush administration to use force against Iraq.

"At the time, the issue of the war overshadowed all other concerns. This was especially true among the party activists who would staff the campaigns and go to the caucuses, and among the Internet donors who would, as it turned out, fund Obama's effort. John Edwards, who had actually been a member in absentia of the Intelligence Committee and had acted far more irresponsibly than Clinton, cut off criticism of himself by apologizing for his vote in favor of the resolution. But Clinton--looking ahead, perhaps, to the general election--refused to apologize. That reinforced an impression that, on an issue as central as the war, she was willing to put politics before principle, and, in so doing, she sustained Obama's campaign at a time when he was making little headway in national polls.

"Still, Clinton, who regularly voted in 2007 for resolutions to set a deadline on the war, looked poised to put the issue behind her--until September, when she backed a resolution introduced by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Jon Kyl directed at Iran's 'destabilizing influence' in Iraq and at its Revolutionary Guard . . . Of all the Democratic candidates, Clinton alone voted for it."

Kos isn't buying Clinton's delegate math. I mean, really not buying it:

"One of the wonders of this primary season has been the ability of the Clinton campaign -- including Hillary herself -- and their supporters to engage in some of the most patently ridiculous and bald faced lies, knowing that everyone else knows they are engaging in patently ridiculous and bald faced lies.

"Chief among those lies is the fiction that Clinton leads in the popular vote.

"Clinton is 'leading' the meaningless popular vote, but only if:

"You count the unsanctioned contests in Florida and Michigan, where candidates were not allowed to campaign;

"You give Obama zero votes in Michigan's Soviet-style election, where Clinton was essentially the only name on the ballot; and