Sometimes I forget that, just because I know something, it doesn’t mean that everybody else knows it, too. So here’s a meme that needs to be more widely known:

The race for the Democratic nomination is already over.

The fat lady may not have actually sung (past tense), but she’s definitely singing. Actually, she’s already hit the final note and is just kind of holding onto it at this point.

If you want the full explanation for this, you should check out this piece from the Politico. But the short version goes something like this: If Clinton wins every remaining primary race by a margin of 60-40 (which is essentially impossible), she would still end up trailing Obama in both pledged delegates and the popular vote. So even in her best-case electoral strategy, she’s completely dependent on the Democratic superdelegates to perform a coup — disenfranchising the primary voters and nominating her over Obama.

How likely is that? Not very.

Many superdelegates have already declared their allegiance, of course. Others will declare over the next few weeks (like former presidential candidate Bill Richardson did yesterday). But the superdelegates who have not yet declared are probably content to let these remaining primaries play out because:

(1) The primaries generally appear to be invigorating the party base and pulling new people into the party.

(2) They don’t want to give an appearance of performing a “coup”. The math says that Obama has this nomination locked up, but that’s not the public perception (largely because the MSM is not widely reporting that story).

So, allowing the primaries to proceed is likely to increase Democratic turnout in November. OTOH, rendering the remaining primaries moot (even if they almost certainly are moot) has the real possibility of creating a backlash that would suppress turnout in the November.

Also:

(3) While it’s certainly true that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is ripping into Obama, talking about how this is “hurting him” in the general election seems a little misplaced. It’s not like the Republican hate-machine is going to go any easier on the guy.

If Obama can’t weather these attacks now, there’s no way he’ll be able to weather them 2, 4, or 6 months from now. While I consider the Wright stuff to be a tempest-in-a-teapot with all the meaningful content of attacking Jimmy Carter because his brother Billy was an idiot, I’d still rather see it happening now rather than being stored up by the Rovian machine and trotted out in the middle of October.

(The exception to this is the fact that the Clintons have been practically announcing that they would prefer to see John McCain as president if Obama gets the nomination. Whenever I see another one of these glowing McCain endorsements from Hillary and Bill I have to seriously wonder if they’ve lost their freakin’ minds.)

At the end of the day, though, the candidate who wins the pledged delegate race is almost certainly going to be the nominee. And if that candidate also has the popular vote behind them, then it’s a dead-lock certainty they’ll be the nominee.

And nothing short of Hillary Clinton turning out to be a man who’s spent the last three decades in a secret gay marriage with Bill or Obama secretly being a member of the KKK who has spent his entire life wearing black-face is going to change that.

Minneapolis School Board 2002 – Goal 1: Setting a Standard An American Agenda – A Plan of Action for the Democratic Party Post-Election Democrats – Coda: Clumsy and Half-Hearted