It’s not about popularity vs numbers. It’s about “hard” vs “easy”.

I’ve heard enough about the delegate numbers and the popular vote. People who go on about these things as if they are meaningful are deliberately ignoring reality and what voters are starting to see. Hillary wins the do-or-die states. They’re difficult and the odds are against her but she still manages to win them. Obama wins the low-hanging fruit. Now, people may legitimately argue that those states count too. But in many of the states he’s won, it has been by overwhelming the traditional regular Democratic voters in a caucus situation. And we have gone over the reasons why caucuses tend not to be representative of Democratic will. They exclude the people most likely to vote for Hillary: the shiftworker, the caretakers, the rushed and hurried mothers who can’t spend several hours at a caucus. Think about that for a sec. Obama is trying to ride to glory on the basis of exclusive caucuses. The young and the DINKs turn out in record numbers. The rest of us can kiss off.

But my point is that primaries in the big D and swing states are not easy to win. Even with all of the loads of cash that Obama has poured into them, he hasn’t been able to swing it. But Hillary has won these difficult states and in several cases, by double digits. If the delegate mathematicians think that has escaped the voters’ attention, they are dreaming. When Hillary won OH and the TX primary, she moved way ahead of Obama in the mental math of most voters. She *is* the presumptive nominee now. The only way Obama can win this is by suppressing voters, either by caucuses or by making sure Florida doesn’t get a seat at the table where it will count for anything. The fact that neither one of them have enough votes to win outright does not change this perception.

She won the tough ones. She’s going to win the other biggies and do well in the remaining *primaries* because people want an end to all of this and they’ll turn out for her to finish it. She’s proven herself and overcome adversity with hard work and grace, She’s the one.

One more thing: It looks like I’m not the only one who thinks Hillary is the one.  Here is a piece from the Timesonline (Britain) that makes essentially the same point.  I’m not saying that Barry can’t make a comeback but the switch in the minds of the remaining voters is probably already thrown for Hillary.

For those of you who are interested, here is the map of the primaries so far from the NYTimes.