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Clinton can't win on pledged delegates.

By Ann Althouse

But can she still somehow win? Howard Fineman explains:

And, you know, I didn't set out to attack Keith Olbermann again, but...

ADDED: Josh Marshall has this:

Now, Fineman is something of a paragon of the mainstream media. So his comments probably raise some suspicion among some readers.

A paragon of what?

But this is a pretty straightforward mathematical question. Doesn't really matter what Fineman or either campaigns say [sic]. Folks paying close attention are as likely to accurately predict the outcomes as the folks in the campaign. So is this true? Is a pledged delegate win for Clinton no longer a realistic possibility?

AND: Is "pledged delegate" the new term for the elected delegates, to go along with the transition from "superdelegate" to "automatic delegate"?

In a sign that the spin war over the significance of super-delegates is underway in earnest, Harold Ickes told assorted Hillary supporters on a private conference call yesterday that the campaign wants them to start referring to super-delegates as "automatic delegates," according to someone on the call.

The person I spoke to paraphrases Ickes, who is spearheading Hillary's super-delegate hunt, this way: "We're no longer using the phrase super delegates. It creates a wrong impression. They're called automatic delegates. Because that's what they are."

"Pledged delegate" sounds confusing to me, because I've heard plenty of talk about how superdelegates were pledging to vote for one candidate or another.

Full post as published by Althouse on February 13, 2008 (boomark / email).