With primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont, it is Mini Tuesday. It is also "D-Day" for Hillary Clinton. Or not. Clinton says no matter the election results, she's staying in. "I'm just getting warmed up."
In the name of party unity, some Democrats are trying to hound Clinton out of the race. Obama supporters like Senators Richard Durbin and John Kerry claim she must "win a big victory in both Ohio and Texas."
Meanwhile, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters that "the most likely outcome will be you won’t see a pledged delegate shift one way or the other." In a memo, Plouffe added:
So it is clear that narrow popular vote wins in Texas and Ohio will do very little to improve their nearly impossible path to the nomination. If they do not win Texas and Ohio by healthy double digit margins – and they led by healthy double digit margins as recently as two weeks ago – they will be facing almost impossible odds to reverse the delegate math.
By most counts, Obama leads Clinton by roughly 100 pledged delegates. I'm no math whiz, but it seems they both share a "nearly impossible path" to win the nomination with pledged delegates by the end of the primary season in June.
