Clinton Wins PA, Loses Nomination to Obama

According to Jonathan Singer's analysis at the pro-Clinton website MyDD.com, that may well be the story-line for what remains of the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The problem for Clinton is that, according to every polling organization out there, the Pennsylvania race has tightened significantly. A small margin of victory--say 8 or 9 percentage points--while providing a morale boost, will not do much to cut into Obama's delegate advantage:

...with a 164 pledged delegate deficit and an overall 136 delegate deficit, merely netting even 20 or 30 delegates out of Pennsylvania--particularly when North Carolina is beginning to look like a rout in favor of Obama (and thus another big delegate pick up)--is just not going to be enough to get Clinton much closer to earning the nomination.

Singer relies on numbers generated by a rather exhaustive article written by Greg Giroux and Jonathan Allen for CQ Politics, titled, "Clinton Rates Slim Edge Over Obama in PA District Delegate Race." Of course, we won't know Pennsylvania's final delegate allocation until after next week's primary, but those who are digging into each and every district, are predicting that the overall delegate totals don't seem likely to change all that much after the Keystone State has had its say.