But please,  check out the haiku duel starting here, between an Obama canvasser and several Hillary supporters (The haikus are scattered throughout the thread...)

Stadiums and crowds
Baritone anaphora
Con men smile, always

The choice in states that Clinton won could very well be Clinton > Obama > McCain, in which case neither is more or less electable than the other. For me as a strong Obama supporter, I've always felt that I would fight for Clinton over McCain no matter what, and I know I'm far from alone. Outside the angry world of blog comment flame wars, this is the prevailing opinion among Democratic voters.

Here's another observation that actually strengthens her argument even more: regardless of how voters in a particular state might think, one might consider that voters in "early" primaries (when there are more candidates) should be allowed to affect the ultimate choice "less" than voters in "later" primaries. Why? We do not have the luxury of a revote, nor do we have a way of expressing our 2'nd and 3'rd choices in a direct way that matters -- so it is impossible to tell how the voters for say Edwards might have voted when the choices are restricted to Obama and Hillary.

My point: if you weight the states by where they (swing-states) appear in a primary calendar -- Hillary's case is even stronger.

The argument Lambert makes about "blue" states -- I do not find complete. Two reasons: It could be argued that these states will remain firmly in the D column regardless of the nominee. Second, if one has to consider Clinton's advantage in these blue states, it would have been fairer to Obama had Lambert included the "red" states that Obama supporters insist will be put into play should he become the nominee. I find that arguemnt hardly convincing, and even if one were to cede those red-states -- I think the electoral math still comes out in Hillary's favor -- but his article would have been more balanced had he considered that point.

Counting only states with a margin less than 11%, Clinton leads by around 235,000 votes. This is with giving Obama all the uncommited Michigan votes but without the caucus that didn't report votes (IA, ME, NV and WA). Using the RCP derived estimates for these, Obama gets an extra 110,00 so HRC ends up with a margin of 125,000.

"That said, there is still a price to be paid for letting the nomination campaign drag on.
At the most personal level, it denies Obama the rest he badly needs. His friends talk with real concern about the fatigue he constantly feels and often shows. But as long as Clinton is campaigning in states that are potentially competitive in November, Obama cannot fail to show up, lest their voters think he is taking them for granted."

And this is the guy that is going to run a nonstop GE campaign to get that EC vote, not to mention then be president for 4 years?  Is he aware that it is a 24/7 job?  I'm sure HRC would be more than happy to send the much younger BHO home to Illinois so that he can catch a nap!

She would win Arkansas and West Virginia. Her odds of winning BOTH Florida and Ohio are over 50%.

1.  Despite the fact that Indiana has gone republican every year since god knows when, we have a democratic house, have had a democrat senator, have had democrats as governors for 16 years, and have a nearly 50/50 split on Federal House seats.
The democrats have an excellent candidate in Jill Long-thompson for governor, and an AA at the top of the ticket will increase AA turn out  exponentially.   I might remind that we actually had a female AA attorney general in this state in the late 80's.

2.  Montana has two democrats with senate seats, a democratically controlled house and senate, and governor.

3.  Colorado is a toss up state.  Perhaps a Colorado governer, or senator could bring in the western vote.

4.  Wyoming voters for the first time in the history of the state are throwing out republicans.

We heard all this electability garbage back during the Kerry Campaign of 2004.  We see how well that worked.   Clinton's problem in the general would be her inability to differentiate her iraq vote from Mcold's.  It was the same issue we had with kerry over Dean back in 2004.  The fact is that Ms. Clinton has put herself in a nearly untenable position as a candidate.  In order to capture the nomination she would have to reject the agreements that she signed ( and affirmed verbally until she was trailing in votes).  All the republicans have to do is talk about how she can't be trusted to keep her word, and that will be it.

While obviously some Clinton voters are not going to vote Obama and some Obama voters are not going to vote Clinton, the majority of Democrats are going to vote for, well, the Democratic candidate. It's independents that have to be won to win most battleground states. And who won the primary doesn't tell us anything about that.

Furthermore, the analysis turns on not counting MI as an Obama state, despite the fact that he has very consistently polled better than Clinton in the last few months.

None of these analyses is particularly convincing. I keep trying to figure out how Arnone is using margin of victory in his analysis and coming up empty. All the analyses seem to compare Obama to Clinton rather than the more valid comparison of
Obama to McCain vs. Clinton to McCain.

The punchline from Poblano's analysis is that Obama and Clinton are very close, with each having about a 50% chance of winning the election based on current conditions. Furthermore, if you look at Poblano's analysis by state, you can see immediately Obama and Clinton's relative strengths and weaknesses. Obama tends to outperform Clinton  in the west (OR, WA), southwest (NV, NM, CO), and upper midwest (WI, MN, IA). He also does better, but not well enough to win, in the praire states (NE, ND, SD, MT) and the south coast states (VA, NC, SC). Clinton tends to outperform Obama in the rust belt (PA, OH), the upper south (AR, WV, MO, plus some states she wouldn't win, but polls better than Obama in like KY and TN), and Florida.

Gotta love that logic.

Although William Arnone's numbers and analysis are amazing, I'm not completely convinced that his premise is accurate:

The winner of the popular vote in the Democratic primary or caucus in each of these key states will have a higher likelihood of carrying that state in November.

Any move by Mr. Obama to declare victory before the last of the Democratic primaries in June, Mr. Rove said, would alienate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's wing of the party. "That's a mistake," he said. "That just is rubbing the loser's nose in it. And a lot of those supporters will remember it by November."

In the Obama campaign war room in Chicago, where Mr. Rove's talking head was just one of several across six television screens, his counsel was taken with a heavy dose of salt.

"Wouldn't taking his advice be a little like getting health tips from a funeral home director?" said Mr. Obama's press secretary, Bill Burton.

Electoral Vote Map

Their argument that they can't overturn the will of the voters is ridiculous too.  Why have super delegates if they are just a rubber stamp for the popular vote?  We don't need them if they don't have the courage to do what is right.  

But here's the problem with that approach: Most electors in the Democratic primary process have cast their votes well before McCain became the Republican nominee. There is an implicit (explicit?) assumption in the Bringiton analysis that primary voters in, say, South Carolina, went to the polls way back in early '08 and voted for the Dem that they thought would be best able to defeat McCain in the GE. Although McCain won that primary, it was by only a 33-30 margin against Huckabee; Thompson as well as Giuliani still lay in the weeds in advance of Super Tuesday on Feb 5.

It's a stretch then (to say the least) that the popular vote totals registered to date in the race for the Democratic nomination have any import regarding the will of voters regarding the GE. Those voters--hell, this WI voter-- went to the Town Hall, civic center, or fire house, and cast votes reflecting their judgment about which, among the slate of Democratic candidates on the ballot in front of them, best reflected their hopes and aspirations.

Those votes were cast in the truest sense of what a party nomination process should distill--Which candidate best represents the ideals we believe in, and the crass calculus that transforms those votes into a $2 parlay on who will win the GE demeans the entire process.