Cross-posted at Election Inspection
No seriously, it's things like this, which seriously test my patience.
First, this little nugget:
Pennsylvania - Clinton by double-digits
North Carolina - Toss-up
Indiana - Toss-up, no recent poll
West Virginia - Clinton by double-digits
Oregon - Toss-up, no recent poll
Kentucky - Clinton by double-digits
Puerto Rico - Likely Clinton, no recent poll
Montana - Likely Obama, no recent poll
South Dakota - Likely Obama, no recent poll
Armstrong has a lot of nerve saying that North Carolina and Oregon are toss-ups, especially North Carolina. Armstrong is likely looking at this PPP poll which shows Obama ahead by only 1 point. My own opinion about this poll has been that it is an outlier, mostly because of that 18-29 year old vote, I don't believe that Hillary Clinton beats out Obama by a 12-point margin among 18-29 year olds (the only states where Clinton has beaten Obama were Arkansas and Oklahoma, even in her home-state of New York Obama beat Clinton out pretty decisively among younger voters). In addition to that, nearly every poll taken has underestimated Obama's support among African Americans. Obama has not failed to get at least 80% of the AA vote since Super Tuesday, and in southern states, he has not failed to get at least 85%, so if we assume that in the final numbers, Obama gets 89% of the AA vote and Clinton gets 9% (which is pretty likely, in my opinion), suddenly, Obama is ahead by 9, and that's with Hillary Clinton winning younger voters by a 12 point margin. Since Obama will win that demographic (if you don't believe me, take a look at Georgia, where Obama won white 18-29 year olds by a 23-point margin (overall, Obama won 18-29 year olds by 64-points). I will make my prediction right here, Barack Obama will not fail to beat Hillary Clinton by at least 10 points in North Carolina, and will likely beat Clinton by 15-20 points, and you heard that here.
Oregon is another of those funny states which Armstrong wants to pretend is a toss-up, even though all the regions which border Oregon went relatively strongly for Obama (Idaho, Washington State, Nevada's Washoe County, and northern California). There is no reason for Obama not to win that state, even if only by single-digits, Obama will win Oregon.
My own delegate projection shows Clinton netting an extra 20 delegates after everything is all said and done from pledged delegates, even though Obama has yet to lose a state which shares a border with Illinois (by the way, this streak will be broken with Kentucky). If Armstrong wants to pretend that Obama and Clinton are on equal ground, it's his right, but he is either ignoring reality or is being dishonest.
The next thing, which is almost laugh-worthy is this:
And Clinton seems to finally turned it around on the finance side
What Armstrong doesn't want to aknowledge is that Obama, as of the end of February (subtracting funds reserved for the general election and campaign debts) had a 10-1 Cash-on-hand advantage ($30M-$3M, and that's before considering that Clinton still hasn't paid back her loan to the campaign, which would leave her at negative $2M). Something which Edwards supporters never really acknowledged is that money does count, for organization, ads, paid staff, campaign materials (bumper stickers, signs, pins, etc.). Obama can organize in all the remaining states long before Clinton can, that gives Obama a leg-up in contests, and means that, regardless of what happens, he can stop Clinton from netting very many more delegates. No matter what happens, Obama will have at least 100 more pledged delegates than Clinton by the end of the primary season, and that number is being incredibly generous to Clinton.
Even the news media, which has been incredibly slow on the uptake, has finally figured out what has been obvious for a while now, Obama has an insurmountable lead, even if Clinton runs the table on all the primaries, which is even less likely than Armstrong seems to think.