Clinton has to ace tough math test to beat Obama

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama emerged from Tuesday's primaries leading Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton by 134 pledged delegates, a small but significant edge that Democrats said would be difficult for her to overcome.

Neither candidate is likely to win the 2,025 delegates needed to claim the nomination by the time the voting ends in June. But Obama's campaign began making a case in earnest Wednesday that if he maintained his edge in delegates won in primaries and caucuses, he would have the strongest claim to the backing of 796 elected Democrats and party leaders known as superdelegates, who are free to vote as they choose.

Clinton aides said she could pull out a victory by winning the biggest primaries to come, including Ohio and Texas on March 4. But Obama's clear lead in delegates allocated by votes in nominating contests is one of many challenges facing her after a string of defeats in which Obama not only ran up big popular-vote margins but also made inroads among voters she had counted on, including women and lower-income people.

Should those cracks show up in Ohio and Texas, it could undermine her hopes that those states will halt Obama's roll.

With every delegate precious, Clinton's advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take several potentially incendiary steps. Top among these, aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of Democratic Party rules.

Clinton won in both states, but essentially was unopposed in Michigan after Obama removed his name from the ballot. Both candidates technically abided by pledges not to campaign actively in either state.

Obama aides reiterated their opposition to allowing Clinton to claim a proportional share of delegates from those states. The prospect of such a fight already has exposed deep divisions within the party.

Julian Bond, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called for the delegates to be seated, saying failure to do so would amount to disenfranchising minority voters. But such a move was denounced Wednesday by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said many people did not go to the polls because they assumed votes would not count.

Clinton advisers acknowledged it would be difficult for her to catch up in the race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning Ohio and Texas in three weeks and Pennsylvania in April. They said party rules, which award delegates relatively evenly among candidates based on the proportion of the vote, would require her to win by huge margins in those states to match Obama in delegates won in previous voting.

The delegate math set up a new front in the battle for the party's nomination, one based on competing views of how party leaders and elected officials whose votes will determine the outcome should make decisions.

Clinton aides said delegates should decide based on who they thought would be the stronger candidate and president. Obama argues that they should follow the will of primary and caucus voters.

Obama aides said they hoped to finish with a pledged-delegate lead of more than 100, which they would portray as a decisive affirmation by primary voters of Obama's candidacy. Clinton advisers said they were looking to bring the margin to significantly fewer than 100 in hope of arguing that the result was too close for superdelegates to consider in deciding how to vote.

Clinton's campaign showed signs of being buffeted by conflicting forces as it grappled with the options. Clinton advisers, after some discussion about whether to focus exclusively on Ohio and Texas for the next three weeks, decided to send her for three days this week to Wisconsin, which votes Tuesday.

Advisers said they did not think she could win but that they had concluded they could not afford to leave any delegates on the table or allow Obama to run up another big margin of victory.

Clinton aides said they also would argue to superdelegates that they should give less deference to an Obama lead because much of it was built in caucuses, which tend to attract far fewer voters than primaries.

"I think for superdelegates, the quality of where the win comes from should matter in terms of making a judgment about who might be the best general-election candidate," said Mark Penn, Clinton's senior campaign adviser.

A count of pledged delegates by The Associated Press showed Obama with a 134-delegate lead: 1,112 to 978.

Including superdelegates, Obama's campaign said he had a lead of 1,139 to 1,003; by the count of the Clinton campaign, Obama was doing even better: 1,141 to 1,004 for Clinton. The Associated Press had Obama ahead 1,275 to 1,220.

There are 1,082 delegates left to be selected.

By any measure, Obama was in a much stronger position Wednesday than he was days ago. That is because Obama not only won a series of states, but also won them by large margins — more than 20 percentage points — so that he began picking up extra delegates and opening a lead on Clinton.

That is the problem for Clinton. If Texas and Ohio were winner-take-all states, Clinton could pick up 334 delegates March 4. She now would have to beat Obama by more than 20 percentage points in those states to pick up enough delegates to imperil Obama.

Clinton faces another problem in Texas. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic turnout in the past election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas, noted that turnout in the past election was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban black districts.

That means more delegates will be available in districts that could be expected to go heavily for Obama. Clinton, Buchanan said, "has got her work cut out for her."

Said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager: "We don't think our lead will drop below 100 delegates. The math is the math."