Clinton Puerto Rico Win Doesn't Revive Nomination Bid (Update1)

By Catherine Dodge

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton's uphill bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination suffered further blows after a compromise in a dispute over Michigan and Florida delegates barely enabled her to chip into Barack Obama's commanding lead -- and low turnout in Puerto Rico ended any chance of winning the popular vote overall.

With just two primaries remaining tomorrow, Obama is almost certain to win the nomination even with Clinton's 2-to-1 victory in Puerto Rico yesterday. The Obama camp said it expects this week to get the 2,118 delegates needed to clinch the nomination at the Democrats' August convention, and many experts agree.

``It's more than likely that within a week or two that Senator Obama will have enough votes to claim that he's going to be the nominee,'' Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who is neutral in the race, said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' yesterday.

``Her candidacy is dead,'' said Julian Zelizer, a public- affairs professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Coming into the weekend, Clinton trailed Obama by 200 delegates. A party compromise on seating delegates from the uncontested races in Michigan and Florida, which were stripped of their delegates for holding early primaries, netted Clinton little more than two-dozen pledged delegates. Under the ruling, each delegate from the two states will get a half a vote.

New York Senator Clinton's win in Puerto Rico put her on track to pick up about two-thirds of the 55 delegates at stake there.

Delegate Count

Overall, she may have had a net gain of as many as 50 delegates over the weekend, leaving her at least 150 behind Obama, an Illinois senator. There are just 31 pledged delegates at stake in tomorrow's contests in South Dakota and Montana, making Clinton's task next to impossible. Moreover, all of the movement of so-called superdelegates -- who are drawn from party leaders and lawmakers and aren't bound by voters' preferences -- is toward Obama.

He picked up endorsements from two more superdelegates today and has at least 2,072 delegates overall, 46 shy of the number needed for the nomination; Clinton has at least 1,914. There are fewer than 200 uncommitted superdelegates, and most are likely to go to Obama, along with the majority of those from Montana and South Dakota.

Popular Vote

Clinton's supporters argue that she is winning the popular vote. Yet going into Puerto Rico, she trailed Obama by more than 275,000 votes. Those figures include the votes in Florida, where the candidates agreed not to campaign. They don't include the results from Michigan, where the candidates didn't campaign and Obama took his name off the ballot.

In Puerto Rico, Clinton scored a net gain of fewer than 150,000 votes, leaving Obama with an overall lead of 125,000, more than enough to offset any gains she may make in South Dakota or Montana.

Clinton yesterday continued to predict she would win the most popular votes, though such assertions aren't likely to carry much weight after this weekend.

``I will lead in the popular vote; he will maintain a slight lead in the delegates,'' she said at a rally in San Juan, Puerto Rico, adding that the race would come down to the superdelegates.

While vowing to fight on, she hinted that could change. ``I'm sort of a day-at-a-time person,'' she told reporters aboard her campaign plane after the Puerto Rico primary. ``We'll see when Tuesday and the day after Tuesday comes.''

Unity Pledge

Obama, 46, has taken on the air of a general-election candidate. Speaking at a rally in Mitchell, South Dakota, he said he called Clinton, 60, to congratulate her. He said the Democrats would be able to put their differences aside in time to take on the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Clinton ``is going to be a great asset when we go on to November to make sure we defeat the Republicans,'' Obama said.

The Democratic Party committee's ruling May 31 to give the Florida and Michigan delegations half a vote was a disappointment for the Clinton campaign.

Clinton supporters said they were satisfied with the Florida decision. They raised the prospect of a floor fight at the convention over the way the Michigan dispute was resolved, saying Obama was awarded too many delegates.

Michigan Results

Clinton's campaign chairman, Terence McAuliffe, left open the possibility that the senator would ask the convention credentials committee to overturn the decision on the Michigan delegates.

``We are going to keep our options open,'' he said yesterday on ABC's ``This Week'' program.

McAuliffe wouldn't say whether Clinton would concede if Obama wins enough delegates this week to reach the 2,118 threshold.

Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, predicted the contest may soon be over.

``Sometime this week, we'll probably have a nominee for the Democratic Party,'' Gibbs said on ``This Week.''

Obama has picked up more than three times as many superdelegate endorsements as Clinton in the past three months. At the start of the nominating contests Jan. 3, Clinton had 169 superdelegate endorsements to Obama's 63, according to the Associated Press.

``It's pretty clear that once we get past the primaries, Obama will be very close to the new magic number,'' said David Redlawsk, a political-science professor at the University of Iowa. ``The pressure is on superdelegates to announce.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington, at Cdodge1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 2, 2008 09:29 EDT

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