Word: argumentative
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...pressure to explain her decision to continue through the summer, despite the nearly insurmountable lead Obama holds among elected delegates. "In order for your staying in to be regarded as anything more than the behavior of a sore loser," says a prominent unaligned Democrat, "you have to make the argument for how you'd be a winner. No one can articulate that argument...
Given this unusual turn of events, the Clinton campaign has seized the chance to promote an argument ground not in numbers but in sentiment: it is asking superdelegates to make a subjective decision about which candidate is best positioned to win the White House in November. The first exhibit of its case is demographic. "I've obviously done very well with women, who are a majority of the electorate," Clinton explained to TIME. "I've done very well with Hispanics. I've done well with older voters. We have to anchor our electoral map in the states that [Democrats] must...
There's a flip side to this as well--the argument that Obama is dangerously weak among key Democratic and swing constituencies. The Clinton campaign has been raising questions about Obama's ability to win white blue-collar voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Hispanics in places like New Mexico and Colorado--all swing states that will most likely decide the election...
...currently about 150 delegates ahead, with only 10 contests left to go.) But her campaign had hoped that, had Michigan and Florida held new primaries, she would be able to take the lead from Obama in the popular vote total. And with that, she planned to make the argument to the party's "superdelegates"-the elected and party officials who get delegate slots by virtue of the positions they hold-that she is the more electable Democrat and the one who should get the nomination...
...revote in Florida and Michigan would almost certainly have strengthened that argument. If it happens, "I have no doubt at the end, when Puerto Rico votes [in June], Senator Clinton would have the most popular votes, and that could have a huge impact on the superdelegates," said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter who has helped raise more than $8 million in pledges of private funds to finance new contests. And if Clinton could pull ahead in the popular vote, he added, it would undercut "the whole raison d'etre of the Obama argument: How do you turn your...