Barrel Strength

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s refusal to bow out of the nomination leads to an analysis by International Herald Tribune, which will get prominent coverage given that it was posted on Drudge Report today, as to how she might secure the nomination. The article suggests the following path to nomination.

First, Clinton must win the Indiana primary … and she must run strongly enough in North Carolina… Then she must win in a state … like Oregon or Montana.

[Second, the] Clinton campaign must also persuade the Democratic National Committee to seat at least some of the delegates she won in the disputed votes in Michigan and Florida. It must also persuade superdelegates to include the popular votes cast in Florida, and maybe in Michigan, in calculating the overall tally.

The rest of the article dwells on the superdelegates and how their support must shift to Clinton. A Salon article takes a different tack altogether if the fight goes all the way to the convention.

And at that point, it would not only be the superdelegates who were in play. A little-known loophole in Democratic Party rules potentially frees up every delegate — even those selected in primaries and caucuses — to shift their allegiance at the convention. All that delegates are required to do is to “in all good conscience” reflect the sentiments of the voters who chose them. For delegates with flexible consciences, the sky is theoretically the limit. “The press is wrong in exclusively focusing on the superdelegates,” says a member of the Democratic National Committee, who has closely studied the convention rulebook. “If it goes to the Convention, everybody’s up for grabs.”

In this scenario your correspondent’s money is firmly with the Clinton campaign. One doesn’t rise up through the scum that is Arkansas politics without winning knife fights.