Journalists: Liberals With Notepads Who Can't Do Math

Attention media morons! Could you please get just a couple--a COUPLE-- of facts right about the Democratic presidential primary.

Fact #1: Sen. Obama will NOT have enough pledged delegates after Oregon to give him 2025, the number needed to become the nominee. It isn't possible, because if Sen. Obama won all of the remaining pledged delegates in all the states, he wouldn't have 1900.

What you are doing, you super-genius elites who hate talk radio, is conflating pledged delegates and superdelegates. Superdelegates are better known by their original title (are you paying attention Mr. Olbermann?) "unpledged" delegates.

Pledged delegates are bound to their candidates by the votes cast back home (theoretically, anyway, though Sen. Clinton has even challenged that idea). Superdelegates cannot--I repeat, CANNOT--cast a vote for anybody until the convention, and until their votes are cast, Obama has zero unpledged delegates in his column. As superdelegates are proving every day, they can change their minds.

This is why Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is proposing a rule change to create a "superdelegate primary" in June. He wants to force the unpledged to cast their votes well before the convention, because he--unlike the entire CNN political team--understands what I just said. Until they vote, the unpledged delegates remain...unpledged. Why is this so hard for the Boston Globe-Democrat to understand?

Fact #2: While it can be argued that Obama's victory is a political, if not technical, done deal, many observers agree that, should Mrs. Clinton take the lead in popular votes, it could have an impact on how unpledged delegates end up voting. And, as Jay Cost points out, it is still possible for Sen. Clinton to do just that--take the popular vote lead without Michigan or Florida.

It's a long shot, involving wins by 20%+ and 30+ margins in West Virginia and Kentucky, but as Jay points out, those are two of the states where Sen. Clinton has the best shot of doing just that. Will she? Probably not.

But what happens if Sen. Obama does lose 70%-30% in West Virginia and then 65%-35% in Kentucky, and then loses by 300,000 votes in Puerto Rico? Are Democrats going to ignore those numbers completely? Maybe. But the press, their legs tingling at the very mention of Obama's name, are declaring all these outcomes irrelevant.

This isn't journalism. It's fortune-telling.

I have said since March 1 that Sen. Obama is going to be the nominee. That's my prediction and it always has been. But I don't report it as fact, I've just been giving my best guess based on the facts at hand. Sen. Clinton could have changed those facts with an upset win in North Carolina. That's why I refused to stick the Kerry Healy Election Fork in her.

She didn't, but I respected the fact that she could have. And I am respecting the fact now that Mrs. Clinton could still change the dynamic of this race.

As a result, I--a radio talk show host and opinion-spewer--am being more objective that the arrogant, self-important "journalists" of the MSM.