BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Campaigning for his wife ahead of next month's primary in this state, Bill Clinton was hardly subtle.
"I want you to run up her vote here in Pennsylvania," he told hundreds of supporters last week at the Hotel Bethlehem, some of whom waited hours in the rain to see him.
Barack Obama leads in the delegate count, and his campaign continues to emphasize piling up delegates, but Hillary Clinton is attempting to create a new battleground in the presidential race: the popular-vote tally. It is the latest, and perhaps the last, hope for her to stop Obama, but the odds are stacked against her.
With an eye toward the superdelegates who will likely decide the nomination, the Clinton camp contends that the total popular vote in the primaries is key to deciding which Democrat can defeat Republican John McCain.
"If Hillary wins the popular vote but can't quite catch up in the delegate vote, then you have to ask yourself which is more important and who's more likely to win in November," Bill Clinton told an ABC television interviewer last weekend.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Clinton backer, has said the popular vote count is more democratic, since a significant part of the delegate selection process is "undemocratic." He was referring to caucuses, in which Clinton has performed poorly against Obama's superior organization.
The Clinton arguments aim at Democratic superdelegates, since neither candidate can win enough delegates in the primaries to gain a majority. Enough superdelegates remain uncommitted to tip the matter either way.
Democratic strategist Steve Murphy said the Clinton campaign is "like a lawyer with a losing case. You file every motion imaginable and hope to hit pay dirt."
Obama appears to have weathered an uproar over his relationship with a controversial pastor. After delivering a highly publicized speech about race and winning New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's endorsement, he has edged back ahead of Clinton, according to a new Gallup national tracking poll released yesterday.
Obama has a mathematically insurmountable lead in delegates earned during the primary season, thanks to party rules that allot nearly as many delegates to the loser in a two-way contest. He also has a popular-vote lead of more than 700,000.
For Clinton to move ahead in popular votes, she would have to clobber him in the remaining primaries -- running up landslide margins that would signal to insiders that Obama's candidacy had effectively collapsed.
Pressing her new strategy last week, Bill Clinton told a Wilkes-Barre, Pa., crowd: "It's all come down to you. You can put her ahead in the popular vote. You can put her on the road to victory." Those words echoed his remark at a campaign event in Texas last month that caused more than a little discomfort for his wife's strategists.
The former president, playing a sometimes unwelcome role in setting the bar for his wife's performance, told a Texas audience: "If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be. It's all on you."
In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries, her strategists tried to wriggle out of that prediction, suggesting that Mrs. Clinton needed to win only one state to keep her candidacy alive; in the end, she swept both primaries (though Obama apparently picked up more delegates in the Texas caucuses).
Pennsylvania is the next must-win state for Clinton, but her husband has effectively set another bar that she may have more difficulty clearing: Unless she gains the overall edge in popular votes, he indicated, it would be hard for the party to deny Obama the nomination.
"If Senator Obama wins the popular vote, then the choice would be easier," Mr. Clinton said in the ABC interview.
Hillary Clinton responded curtly when asked last week whether the nomination race was a contest for delegates or popular votes. "I think it's a question about everything, and I think people are going to have to take everything into account," she said.
For months, the Obama camp has said the nomination fight is about winning delegates, though it has sought to focus attention on the number of states won, too.
"What's clear is that Senator Obama is winning in pledged delegates, states won, and the popular vote," said Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesman.
Clinton's popular-vote strategy was dealt a setback last week with the collapse of efforts to stage new primaries in Michigan and Florida. Without those states, it could be nearly impossible for her to gain the popular vote lead.
Clinton strategist Mark Penn estimates that as many as 7 million voters could participate in primaries left on the calendar. For Clinton to overtake Obama in popular votes, she'd need about 60 percent of the vote in those elections.
She's won 47 percent in the first 40 contests and is favored by 47 percent of Democratic voters in the Gallup poll. She won Ohio, a state similar to Pennsylvania, with 54 percent of the vote. Obama is favored in several remaining primaries, including North Carolina, the last big state.
Even if she eked out a popular-vote edge, Clinton would still have to overcome resistance among party leaders to the idea that votes should matter more than delegates earned in the primaries and caucuses.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is neutral in the race, told ABC's This Week recently, "If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic Party."
The Clinton campaign argues, however, that Democrats are having second thoughts about Obama and that superdelegates need to take that into account.
Penn, her chief pollster, contends that voters appear to have "a significant case of buyer's remorse" about nominating Obama and cites recent national opinion surveys that showed Clinton erasing Obama's lead.
With Michigan and Florida abandoning plans to stage new primaries, Penn said, the results of earlier contests in those states should count toward the popular-vote calculation, even though the Democratic National Committee invalidated both primaries before they were held. As for Michigan, where Clinton's name was on the ballot and Obama's wasn't, the Obama vote could be calculated on the basis of those cast for "uncommitted," he said.
Penn also floated a new talking point for superdelegates to consider in choosing a nominee: the candidate with the most delegates from primaries only, excluding delegates gained in caucuses. By that narrower measure, Obama still has an advantage, but only by 16 delegates, which a big Clinton victory in Pennsylvania could reverse.
Slicing the results of the primaries in ways that favor Clinton won't make a real difference, say party strategists, unless she wins virtually all of the remaining contests and shows that she'd run much stronger against McCain in states that matter in the fall.
"The Obama candidacy would have to collapse for her to win," said Murphy, a Democratic consultant not aligned with either campaign. "Their real strategy is to buy as much time as possible in the hope that that will happen."
With almost three months left in the primary season, campaigning has started in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon, which vote in May. In Pennsylvania, polls show Clinton with a double-digit lead.
"The bottom line is this," her husband told Pennsylvania voters last week. "If you will give her a big victory here, she will roll through these last states, she will have more popular votes, she will be the nominee of the Democratic Party and she will get elected president of the United States."
paul.west@baltsun.com
PROJECTED PLEDGED*
Barack Obama 1,404
Hillary Clinton 1,249
Needed to nominate: 2,024
Total delegate votes: 4,047
*Totals do not include superdelegates.
[Source: Associated Press]
