... if you count Michigan and Florida. Hillary claimed yesterday that she was 100,000 votes ahead in the popular vote for the Democratic nomination. Her statement was artfully crafted so as to be technically true but nevertheless misleading: "I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anyone else," she said. The key clause here is "people who have voted." While people in Michigan and Florida voted, their votes did not count. How odd that Hillary, who once upon a time agreed that she would not campaign in those states and that those states' votes wouldn't count, is now the champion of enfranchising those voters.

This is an excellent example of what to expect from President Hillary Clinton: misleading phrases that are technically true but pragmatically misleading, and support for positions that are politically popular, not right. President Bush is currently the master of the technically-true-but-misleading phrase; with Hillary, we would get at least four more years of that.

While Hillary continues to count Michigan and Florida voters, no one else does. There will be no re-vote in those states, which chose -- against DNC rules -- to hold their primaries before Feb. 5. As a result, their delegates will not be seated.

Here's the problem: Hillary is, in reality, 500,000 votes behind Obama. With her 10-point victory in Pennsylvania, she officially cannot win the nomination with pledged delegates alone. Prior to Pennsylvania, she would have had to win every remaining contest by at least 20 points. She has taken out insurance in the form of trying to coerce superdelegates, but a win financed by superdelegates in spite of Obama's popular victory would make her candidacy appear illegitimate and artificial. Add these two facts -- the fact that she cannot win through pledged delegates and the fact that she must appear to have popular support -- and the sum is that she desperately needs to get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated. That gives her more popular votes, which equals more legitimacy, and if she succeeds in wooing enough superdelegates to her side to win the nomination, she can point to her popular vote numbers as proof that she won through "the will of the people" and not back-room deals with party insiders.

But what would the rest of the country think? Hillary is essentially asking to change the rules now that she dislikes the outcome. Obama didn't campaign in Florida, and he -- along with every other Democratic candidate except Hillary -- wasn't on the ticket in Michigan, since everyone agreed that Florida and Michigan wouldn't count. Hillary was okay with this deal in January because she -- like most of us -- thought the election would be decided in Iowa and New Hampshire like it is in every election. Once she realized that Obama had more popularity than anyone had thought, she panicked and reneged on her agreement under the assumption that votes need to be counted, people need to be recognized, etc. etc. Never mind that there is no right to vote in a party primary. While party primaries are administered by the FEC and local boards of election, they do not hold the same status as official elections. Parties, for example, may limit participation in their primaries to party members only. The notion that voters have a "right" to vote in a primary is a mistaken notion; voters in primaries are subject to the stipulations of the parties involved, unlike a general election.

Seating the delegates outright is out of the question; a contest where Hillary was the only candidate would be plainly unfair, as would a contest in which no other candidates campaigned in the state because they thought (correctly) that that state wouldn't count. All she can do now is mount a P.R. campaign designed to make her appear -- both to voters and superdelegates -- more electable than she really is. The fact is that, in order to win the presidency, the Democratic candidate has to be able to sway not just died-in-the-wool Democrats, but also swing voters and new voters. In Pennsylvania, Obama captured six of ten new voters: he also holds sway among swing voters. Republicans definitely don't like Hillary Clinton, and her candidacy wouldn't make them abandon John McCain. Obama, however, might do just that.

The next contests are May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina. Polls in Indiana are up in the air, ranging from neck-and-neck to a huge Hillary win. North Carolina is definitively Obama country, with the spread ranging from 9 points in his favor to 25 points in his favor. He will soundly defeat Hillary in North Carolina; only Indiana remains a swing state.

If Hillary loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate count, but manages to use the Clinton "victory at any cost" machine to drive right over Obama and secure the nomination, the Democratic party will be in shambles and their victory in November -- which is crucial for the survival of this country -- will be in serious doubt. A McCain victory assures continued involvement in Iraq, continued military spending, no foreseeable health care reform, continued tax breaks for the Americans who need tax breaks the least, and God knows what kind of foreign policy. A McCain victory in November would give added credence to the Republicans, as though "they're back!" Republican inertia would in turn lead to more Republican wins, bringing us right back to where we were in 2002.