The Obama Campaign is now sending out a memo to automatic delegates, containing these gems:

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

~Snip~

Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

So, not only does the Obama campaign contend that the actual vote totals are an “illegitimate” way to gauge the “will of the people,” they are also poising themselves to declare victory on May 20, before they even have and actual majority of the delegates (so much for “the rules”), and before the Rules and Bylaws Committee even addresses Florida and Michigan on May 31st.

Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

~snip~

Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold—1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included. 

“On May 20 we’re going to declare victory,” said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be “the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes.” 

This is flat out ridiculous. Not only will South Dakota, Montana and Puerto Rico not have voted yet, making their claim to the popular vote erroneous, but they won’t even have reached the 1,784 majority of pledged delegates including Michigan and Florida, much less the bunk 2,025 threshold, and certainly not 2,209.

This is clearly a desperate ploy by the Obama campaign to claim victory before Michigan and Florida are even discussed, and before all the votes have been cast.

If the Obama campaign goes through with this short-sighted, illegitimate, divisive, and destructive “plan,” Obama will solidify the discontent of Clinton’s supporters and will ensure that they stay home, or worse [for him], vote McCain in November.

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