By IRNA,
New York : Hillary Clinton’s uphill bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination suffered further blows after a compromise in a dispute over Michigan and Florida delegates barely enabled her to chip into Barack Obama’s commanding lead — and low turnout in Puerto Rico ended any chance of winning the popular vote overall.
With just two primaries remaining tomorrow, Obama is almost certain to win the nomination even with Clinton’s 2-to-1 victory in Puerto Rico.
The Obama camp said it expects this week to get the 2,118 delegates needed to clinch the nomination at the Democrats’ August convention, and many experts agree.
“It’s more than likely that within a week or two that Senator Obama will have enough votes to claim that he’s going to be the nominee,” Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
“Her candidacy is dead,” said Julian Zelizer, a public-affairs professor at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Coming into the weekend, Clinton trailed Obama by 200 delegates. A party compromise on seating delegates from the uncontested races in Michigan and Florida, which were stripped of their delegates for holding early primaries, netted Clinton little more than two-dozen pledged delegates. Under the ruling, each delegate from the two states will get a half a vote.
New York Senator Clinton’s win in Puerto Rico put her on track to pick up about two-thirds of the 55 delegates at stake there.
Delegate Count
Overall, she may have netted as many as 50 delegates over the weekend, leaving her at least 150 behind Obama, an Illinois senator.
There are just 31 pledged delegates at stake in tomorrow’s contests in South Dakota and Montana, making Clinton’s task next to impossible.
Moreover, all of the movement of so-called superdelegates — who are drawn from party leaders and lawmakers and aren’t bound by voters’ preferences — is toward Obama.
After the weekend results, Obama has at least 2,070 delegates, less than 50 shy of the number needed for the nomination; Clinton has at least 1,914.
There are fewer than 200 uncommitted superdelegates, and most are likely to go to Obama, along with the majority of those from Montana and South Dakota.