Of the votes that have been counted and tabulated independently, Clinton is up by 303,000 votes. Everything else is a guess, and you have to be very charitable to Obama in your guessing to give him the lead.

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The only way for Obama to be in the lead is if he gets the caucus estimates of 110,222 (which may be fair, although the unfairness overall of caucuses is well documented) plus ALL the MI uncommitted. In the exit polls, he got around 70% of the non-Clinton votes) so one were to give him anything for MI it would have to be 70% of the 238K of uncommitted (about 166K).

This leaves Hillary 27K ahead. After Montana and S Dakota this particular count will be almost tied, depending on turnout (probably 200K-400k combined) and margin.

Of course, as far as actual votes cast (which is how she usually expresses it) she is safely ahead. It's telling that the only way he can actch up is to be given votes he didn't receive.

Even 50-70% of Uncommitted in MI - which Obama supporters can argue is fair, is very generous. There were after all other candidates in the race at the time of the MI primary. I believe BTD has proposed such an adjustment. 75% of uncommitted is 178,626 votes and would make a difference by 60k. By that metric, Obama would be behind in that category as well, by about 15k votes.

Obama is only ahead if you give him the uncommitted in Michigan and count the above caucus states, and then it's by 44,605

If the MI uncommitted votes are apportioned between Obama, Edwards, and Richardson in accordance with the published exit polls, Obama's vote total drops by 64,504 votes.

With this correction/adjustment, Clinton leads by 19,899 votes under the scenario that includes FL/MI and the IA/NV/ME/WA estimates.

There are provisions in the Rules/Charter of the Democratic Party that it operate "in the sunshine".  

Yesterday, it was glaringly obvious that those provisions were violated with impunity.

Given the guesswork to come up with any  metric other than the delegate count... there is a large margin of error... and this race would be declared a tie by an unbiased observer. You'd need somebody not from earth though.

When it gets this complicated, you know you are in trouble.  Counting votes of those who did not vote is crazy.  Count the votes as voted.  If someone stayed home, so be it.  Others voted.  If someone withdraw his name from the ballot, then he needs to live with that choice.

This could be such a clear and clean perspective and really the only honest way to view it.  Leave the "uncommitted" as just that.  Let Obama contact them, if they support him, fine.  If they do not, then that is fine also.  

It's clear that Obama got a head start with some brilliant campaign strategies of storming the caucuses and mostly going after red states that are usually ignored. Quite clever. But when the real politics hit the road, he has failed. We see his limits. He can't compete in the contests that are the most important in a general election. And he can't withstand the scrutiny of his voting record, his personal circle of friends, or controversial things in his background. I'd wager that if there was vetting early on in the campaign, we would have seen every month be like the last four months.

If the results had been wildly at odds with the pledged delegates, Clinton would have a viable argument to bring to the convention.

But they are.

For argument sake lets not count Michigan one of three ways:
a) without caucus
b) with caucus
c) in states with caucus and primary using the primary results

"A" yields Obama +24,000 votes out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.1% Obama)

"B" yields Obama +134,000 votes out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.4% Obama)

"C" yields Obama +63,000 votes ("B" minus 50K for WA and minus 11K Nebraska) out of 35,000,000 cast (+0.3% Obama)

And yet in all scenarios out of 3346 pledged delegates, Obama leads by 120 delegates:
1709.5 Obama (51.1%)
1589.5 Clinton (47.5%)

So what is under the best scenario for Obama ("B") a 0.4% advantage in votes, is a 3.6% advantage in delegates.  Understand that's a DIFFERENCE BY NINE-FOLD!

If the allocation were equitable the delegate count would be the same as the popular vote and Obama would not have be up 51.1-47.5, he'd be up 49.5-49.1, in which case the breakdown would be:

1656 - Obama
1643 - Clinton

He'd be leading by 13 delegates instead of 120!  Again, a difference of 9-FOLD!

And with the guy losing every competitive contest since March, all the big states (except his own), all the swing states and performing poorly in major demographics and matching up worse in swing states against McCain vs. Clinton the Superdelegates would be just stupid to not compensate for the 13 vote pledged delegate advantage and nominate Clinton-Obama as the ticket.

No sane human being is going to believe what the Clinton campaign's numbers are asking them to believe: that Obama has no base of support in Michigan.

The point is - you can't count votes not counted.  It's like counting the disenfranchised voters who were scrubbed by Diebold as felons in Florida 2000 and claiming Gore victory on that basis.  Otherwise Edwards supporters could go to the convention and argue about how many votes and delegates he would have had he not dropped out before Super Tuesday.

Then the Kucinich supporters, Richardson, Biden and Dodd start making their claims.  Heck even the Draft Gore folk count the votes based on polling.  

Game 1  HRC 12   BHO  2
Game 2  HRC 2    BHO  4
Game 3  HRC 10   BHO  6
Game 4  HDC 3    BHO  4
Game 5  HRC 2    BHO  1
Game 6  HRC 10   BHO 12
Game 7  HRC 4    BHO  6

BHO  Wins Series  4 games to 3

Total Runs Scored
HRC - 43
BHO - 35

Using this ...fans of HRC would argue that she should have won the series based on scoring more runs total.

Ok that is fine to argue.... and if you want to change the rules of baseball to whoever scores the most runs in a series wins the title... then thats fine....  but currently the rules state that the team who wins the most games in the series wins the title...

its the candidate who wins the most delegates.

Hillary won 8 states with 1,125,125 total votes(659,512 more than Obama):

1. Ohio (by 228,781 votes) ;
   
2. Rhode Island (by 33,635 votes);
   
3. Texas (by 95,731 votes, reduced by 5,298 caucus votes won by Obama);
   
4. Pennsylvania (by 214,224 votes);
   
5. West Virginia (by 147,551 votes);
   
6. Indiana (by 14,195 votes);
   
7. Kentucky (by 249,346 votes); and
   
8. Puerto Rico (by 141,662 votes).

1. North Carolina (by 222,859 votes);
   
2. Oregon (by 108,458 votes);
   
3. Mississippi (by 100,123 votes);
   
4. Wyoming; (by 2,066 caucus votes);
   
5. Guam (by 7 caucus votes) and
   
6. Vermont (by 32,100 votes).

a) Counts the Washington caucus vs. Washington primary: a 50K vote advantage for Obama

b) Nebraska caucus vs. Nebraska primary: a 11K vote advantage for Obama