Simple Math

Charlie Cook is always three steps ahead of the media:

The hand-wringing today is over a nomination process that some say has gone on too long, but just four years ago, it was over a process that seemed to begin and end in Iowa. Once Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., pulled off his upset win in Iowa, with his neighboring state of New Hampshire next on the calendar, the Democratic nomination process was effectively over. One state voted; the nomination was basically settled.

In 2000, the process went on for all of two states. Once Vice President Al Gore beat former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., in New Hampshire (Bradley had not seriously contested the Iowa caucus), the nomination fight was over. Two states voted; the nomination was settled.

The media make it sound as if this is the first time a nomination process has ever went past March. Accordingly, the GOP is trying to hide the fact that its soon to be nominee tried to switch parties twice in the last 7 years and did not win the conservative vote in one single contested primary. Add the mix together and we get a hyperbole fascination of a nomination process that is anything but losable to Barack Obama.

Someone recently gave Clinton a 12-percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

My guess is that her odds are less than half of that; it would take three or four consecutive weeks of problems the magnitude of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright hitting Obama, plus Clinton getting every other break in the world. And she would still need to win the remaining contests by 60 percent or more to close the gap sufficiently so that the remaining uncommitted superdelegates might break a tie (defined as an Obama margin of, say, 60 delegates or less) in her favor.

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Unless Clinton wins Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and a few other places by landslide margins, which is very unlikely, her donors will stop giving and her campaign will grind to a halt.

Hillary would need to win every primary or caucus left by very wide margins to come close to snatching the nomination from Obama. But do we hear that in the media? No. We hear that Hillary is still in the fight and the Democrats are imploding all over themselves. Hillary's comeback would be equal to Mike Huckabee, who has won more contests than Hillary, wrestling the nomination away from McCain. The only way Huck could do that is by winning every primary left by very wide margins and then go to the convention and strong-arm it from the Party. The scenario isn't that much different from what Hillary would have to do yet the media makes it sound very differently.

I suppose Hillary can stay in as long as she wants; if I were her I would too. It's the media's responsibility to accurately report her odds of winning and her real standing at capturing the nomination. Once the media did that Hillary's donors would back out quicker than George Bush heading to Crawford for vacation effectively ending this charade.