Why isn't Hillary Clinton quitting?

Why isn't Hillary Clinton quitting?

The bottom line is simple, seemingly. Barack Obama needs about 50 more delegates to secure the majority required in order to gain the nomination at the Democratic convention at the end of August. Hillary Clinton needs more than 300. Tuesday, when the delegates from the final two states - Montana and South Dakota - cast their vote in the primaries, the nomination will be within Obama's reach. The super-delegates, who are waiting patiently for the chime of the bell that will signal the end of the race, will then immediately announce their decision to vote for Obama. On Tuesday night, according to every reasonable calculation, Obama will have the majority.

Therefore, the interesting question now is not what Obama will do - he will hold a big victory parade - but rather what his rival, Clinton, will do. During the beginning of the week, she radiated fighting spirit as though the race wasn't even close to being over. Her landslide victory in Puerto Rico injected fuel into her campaign, and added another link to the chain of arguments that she has directed at the super-delegates in efforts to convince them not to be too quick to announce Obama's victory.

Clinton: I have more votes

Clinton's leading argument is that she has received a larger number of votes than her rival. The number of people who voted for her is the highest number of votes any candidate has ever received in a primary election, due to the unprecedented voter turnout in this fascinating rivalry between Clinton and Obama. However, in relying on the popular vote argument, Clinton is taking a path that many of her supporters view as dangerous. In televised appearances, her campaign managers endlessly point to two historical precedents: Al Gore's defeat in 2000 despite his majority in the popular vote, and the last time the Democratic Party gave the nomination to the candidate that received fewer votes, in 1972, when George McGovern was nominated over Ed Muskie. McGovern was crushed by Richard Nixon in the general elections that year. Is Clinton insinuating that the same will happen to Obama in the fight against Republican candidate John McCain?

McCain was the first speaker at the conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC on Monday, and at least when it comes to political lobby delegates, it appears that McCain has a sure majority. McCain received a warm welcome, as will Obama on Wednesday. The one thing that indicated that the delegates likely prefer McCain was the wild applause mcCain got when he criticized the idea of an American president meeting with Iranian leaders - an idea that Obama expressly supports. As he's done many time in the past, McCain used harsh words when speaking of Iran. The need to stop Iran's nuclear program is linked, according to him, to the prevention of a second Holocaust.

Much like Clinton who uses Gore and McGovern to back her arguments up with historical fact, McCain also pulled off a clever political stunt. The Jewish crowd before him historically leans toward the Democratic Party, and only special incentives will draw the Jewish toward a Republican candidate such as McCain. He therefore presented the AIPAC voters with two incentives: one living - Senator Joe Lieberman who comes with him, and one dead - Henry "scoop" Jackson. The common denominator between the two: both are democrats who were not at peace with their party due to their hawkish foreign policy.