Collectively, Clinton's advantage in Super Delegates, Michigan, and February 5th home states provides her with roughly a 500 delegate advantage on Obama. If she were to also win Florida and California, which combine for 555 pledged delegates, it would be impossible for Obama to be ahead on delegates after February 5th. He could win every other state between now and February 6th, and never make up that sort of delegate deficit.
Now, there are several complicating factors to this scenario. First, while the DNC admits that it will seat Michigan and Florida, one of the main purposes of the threat to remove their delegates is to insure that Michigan and Florida's delegates won't be included in the running delegate count for any candidate. In other words, the basic DNC plan is to maintain the threat to not seat Michigan and Florida until the nomination is decided, thus denying Michigan and Florida an impact on the nomination process without denying them a seat at the convention. However, once the media starts maintaining running delegate counts of their own, it isn't clear if they will comply with this plan.
Second, there is no guarantee that Clinton will be able to maintain her hold on unpledged, "Super" delegates if Obama starts to rack up wins. If Clinton supports start to defect, Obama will close the ground in the Super Delegate count. Also, Obama could start to pickup undecided Super Delegates if he continue to win early states.
Third, Democratic primaries do not have winner take all delegate systems. Most of the pledged delegates will be dished out on a proportional basis and a congressional district basis to candidates who receive more than 15% of vote in a congressional district. For example, only 376 of the 1,688 unpledged delegates to be had on Super Tuesday will be allotted to the winner of individual states. The rest will be determined not on a winner take all, state by state system, but on a proportional, congressional district by congressional district level. So, even if she sweeps Arkansas, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, Obama will still score a decent number of delegates in Clinton's four home states. Then again, Clinton will also score delegates in Illinois, just as she will also score delegates in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
However, the overall point still stands. If Clinton is able to win Florida on January 29th and California on February 5th, it is very hard to see how she falls too far behind in the delegate count. In fact, if her Super Delegates are combined with victories in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York, it is hard to see how she falls behind in the delegate count at all. She might very well maintain the national strength to pull this off, too, since Rasmussen's national post-Iowa tracking poll shows Obama only gaining a single point on Clinton, with most of the movement actually going to Edwards. The latter isn't really surprising since, at long last, Edwards is finally getting some national coverage due to his second place finish in Iowa.
Obama is headed to victory in New Hampshire and, after that, South Carolina. Clinton, however, will still win Michigan, and still has good chances to take both Nevada and Florida. All told, this should be enough to keep Clinton in the game nationally, and allow her to hold down her four home states. All of this should render California a key battleground that might very well decide the nomination. The nomination isn't over, not by a longshot. While a quick and decisive nomination victory appears to have slipped from Clinton's grasp, it would be wise to disabuse ourselves of any notions that Obama can finish her off by sweeping Iowa and New Hampshire. There is a seven-state path for Clinton that would keep her in the game after Super Tuesday, and the only real doubts for her in those seven states are Florida and California.
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