In which the author loses his mind

Why this primary season is driving me insane.

(In this article, the author will replace his traditional style of summarizing news stories without editorial bias with RAW UNBRIDLED SARCASM. Please be forewarned that the following statements will be purely opinion and not meant to be construed as fact. Thank you. --ed.)

The dominant story in the headlines today was that Barack Obama all but officially cut ties with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial pastor who has been causing problems for him on the campaign trail. (I've already documented my feelings on the Wright imbroglio previously; feel free to refresh yourself on them.) After laying the story to rest a few weeks ago, Wright has taken it upon himself to go on a speaking tour in an effort to clear his name. To his credit, he sounds much more polished and intelligent than the sound bites you hear on YouTube. And to his credit, Obama really didn't have any other political recourse than to once again publicly distance himself from Wright. That's all good and well. But why does this story have to be the top item on my Google News page? It's a story that's already been put to bed several weeks ago. It didn't affect the polls the first time around, and it won't affect the polls this time around. (Pro-Obama voters would love him even if he ate babies, anti-Obama voters would hate him even found a way to cure cancer and turn it into gold, and undecided voters will vote based on the economy.) Let it go already! It doesn't matter!

I know I sound like a broken record here, but the fact is that none of the election coverage over the past few months has really mattered. Almost without exception, each state has gone for the candidate projected to win there weeks and months earlier. The only exception has been Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire, which showed Obama leading on the day of the primary. Can we please skip to the end already? Clinton DOES NOT have a chance to win the nomination. She can take the race all the way to the convention, sure, but in the end, she's going to end up as close to winning the nomination as Dennis Kucinich. Taking second place isn't any different than taking twentieth. You still lose.

Don't believe me when I say she's not going to win? Take a look at Slate's Delegate Calculator, which shows how many delegates each candidate has and stands to win in each state. As I'm writing this article, Obama holds a 155 delegate lead. That may not sound like much when there are over 3100 delegates that have been awarded, but that's more delegates than there were at stake in Ohio. (Remember when Ohio was a big deal?) Obama's lead is huge, and Clinton isn't doing much to chip away at it. The major media outlets made a huge deal about her win in Pennsylvania last week, saying that she was back from the dead and that maybe Obama was the underdog now. This is lunacy. Absolutely ridiculous. She ended up with a net gain of 12 delegates from that primary. If she wanted to make a legitimate claim that she could win this race, she would have needed at least twice that to start making a dent in Obama's lead. As it stands, Clinton needs to win the remaining nine primaries by forty points each to even catch up to Obama. Forty points. That means she needs to get at least 70% of the vote in nine more contests if she wants to take the lead and start convincing superdelegates that the has the voice of the people.

Do we have any idea how utterly impossible it is to get 70% of the vote in any given state? Any??? It's only been done twice in this primary season. Obama did it in Hawaii (where he benefited from being a native son and the caucus format) and Clinton did it in Arkansas (again, with the native son). Obama couldn't do it in Illinois. Clinton couldn't do it in New York. John McCain is just barely pulling it off now, even though he's UNOPPOSED. Is this starting to make sense? HILLARY IS DEAD, PEOPLE. ACCEPT IT.

Seriously. Let's just agree to tune out all election coverage until June 4, when we wake up and see that Obama is STILL ahead after the Montana and South Dakota primaries. Clinton won't have a leg to stand on. She'll be completely finished and won't have anything else to fall back on. (Who am I kidding? Of course she'll come up with something else to justify staying in the race.) Anything else that happens between now and then can be safely ignored, unless we find out Obama is a convicted murderer, alligator rapist, or serial pope abuser. Almost every single primary (remember New Hampshire?) has gone according to the polls so far. There's really no reason to assume that it won't continue. Here, I'll even tell you who's going to win each of the remaining nine contests:

May 6: Indiana (Obama, close)
North Carolina (Obama, by a lot)

May 13: West Virginia (Clinton, by a lot)

May 20: Kentucky (Clinton, by a lot)
Oregon (Obama, close)

June 3: Montana (no polling data available, but probably Obama by a lot)
South Dakota (same thing)

There aren't any opinion polls taken for Guam and Puerto Rico, either. Even if we assume those to be virtual ties, there's no chance that Clinton will get 70% of the remaining vote. Even if she does, she still has to convince something like 80% of the remaining superdelegates to side with her. It's impossible.

Seriously. Come back and read this article on June 4 and see if I wasn't right.