Analysis: Time, delegate math working against Clinton

By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Time is running out on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the long-ago front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination who now trails Barack Obama in delegates, states won and popular votes.

Compounding Clinton's woes, Obama appears on track to finish the primary campaign fewer than 100 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to win.

Clinton argues to Democratic officialdom that other factors should count, an unprovable assertion that she's more electable chief among them. But she undercut her own claim in Wednesday night's debate, answering "yes, yes, yes" when asked whether her rival could win the White House.

There's little if any public evidence the party's elite, the superdelegates who will attend the convention, are buying her argument anyway.

In the days since the surfacing of Obama's worst gaffe of the campaign - an observation that small town Americans are bitter folk who cling to religion and guns out of frustration - he has gained six convention superdelegates, to two for Clinton.

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