Mark Halperin seems pretty upset by the New York Times' statement of the obvious: after Tuesday, it will be fair to say that Barack Obama will win the Democratic Party's nomination.

I don't know that it would be fair to call Halperin a Clinton loyalist, but I think his outrage is just a smidge over-the-top.

It's been quite some time since I've heard anyone outside of the immediate orbit of Camp Clinton make the case that at this point, she could possibly win the nomination, and on Tuesday it gets even harder. It's just a math problem.

To be fair to Halperin, the NYT article was short on specifics, but based on the paper's previous reporting, most of the undeclared superdelegates support the Pelosi standard. Given that Obama effectively needs just about one dozen superdelegates under the current rules (and 50 under the Florida rules), there's just no path to the nomination for Clinton.

Sure, Barack won't formally be the nominee until August. That's obvious -- that's why we're going to Denver. But it's equally obvious that he will be the nominee when the convention comes -- and that makes him the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.

But if anyone wants to make an argument for how Clinton wins the nomination at this point, I'm ready to hear it.