Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 6:02 AM Pacific

First it was Pelosi. Now its superdelegates. A consensus is forming: Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party's nominee.

Three things happened this weekend that might not get much time on cable television, but were huge developments nonetheless.

1. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thinks superdelegates ought to follow the results of the primaries and caucuses, specifically identifying pledged delegates as her key metric.

2. During yesterday's Iowa County Convention, Barack Obama gained total of nine additional delegates -- eight from John Edwards supporters, and one from Hillary Clinton supporters. This shows that Clinton's attacks are backfiring, and that the Democratic activist base is rallying around Barack Obama.

3. Finally, today The New York Times reports that based on dozens of interviews, undecided superdelegates generally agree that they should back the will of the voters.
   

These three things, taken together with the fundamental delegate math, suggest a consensus is forming: Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party's nominee.

Hillary Clinton's delegate math is even tougher than most people think. As you can see from this chart, even if she were to win 60% of the pledged delegates that remain on the calendar, she would still fall short of the lead -- and would need a large majority of superdelegates to overturn the results of the primaries and caucuses.

Given the clarity of Speaker Pelosi's position, the trends revealed in the NYT article, and the Democratic activist base that is consolidating around Barack Obama, there is just no way Hillary Clinton will win support from enough superdelegates to overturn the vote.

More importantly, there's almost no chance that Hillary Clinton will win 60% of the remaining delegates. She's only broken the 60% threshold in three states -- Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. In all likelihood, she'll end up winning about 50% of the remaining delegates, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more. At that point she will need to win such an overwhelming majority of the uncommitted superdelegates that she probably won't even contest the nomination in Denver.

To put her superdelegate challenge in perspective, according to Democratic Convention Watch, in the last month Clinton has gained 6 superdelegates -- and Barack Obama has gained 46.5 (some superdelegates only get half a vote). That means Barack Obama has won nearly 90% of the superdelegates over the last month. There is no way that Clinton can reverse that trend without winning huge pledged delegate victories -- and such victories are exceptionally unlikely.

Even if the Florida and Michigan situations were to be resolved with new votes in those states, Clinton's delegate hurdle would be all but insurmountable. The only chance she'd have is if she were to win 60% of the remaining delegates, and as I've shown above, the chances of that happening are remote at best.

Now, none of this means Hillary Clinton should be forced to quit the race. That's entirely up to her and her supporters. It's none of our business.

At the same time, especially given these numbers, Hillary Clinton does have a responsibility not just to the Democratic Party but also to the country as a whole to do everything possible to keep this campaign civil. That means no more "shame on you" moments, no more praising John McCain at Barack Obama's expense, no more mocking of Obama supporters, and no more equivocation when asked about false smears.

As for us, we should just keep on doing what we've been doing. It's worked so far, hasn't it?