I keep reading about Obama "clinching" the nomination, as if an election in a democracy were some sort of sporting event. For example:

With more superdelegate endorsements after Kentucky and Oregon primaries the night before, Obama was just 64 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination

Except that's wrong. Obama must know it's wrong, any professional knows it's wrong, and it is wrong, and even the OFB yammering what's wrong day after day after day after Kos-rec'd diary day doesn't make wrong right. Again, Mario Cuomo, professional and SD, explained:

Gov. CUOMO: In its design, [the Democratic process is] supposed to go through to the end to a convention, and at the convention is the only place where the votes count. Most people don’t understand that all the counts that have already been— all the contests that have already been held did not produce votes. They produced pledges, which probably would be lived up to at the convention.

The nominee is nominated--"clinches"--only after the delegates vote, and not when they're crowned by our famously free press "reporting" on what delegates might do in the future when they actually do vote.

To hear the OFB and our famously free press talk, it's as if the Yankees "clinched" the Pennant by giving interviews about what they were going to do, before they actually took the field!

Did the Obama campaign take a page from the Bush playbook in FL 2000? There, day after day after day after day the Republicans yammered that Bush had already won, the country couldn't afford to wait, we needed closure, and finally Scalia wrote Bush v. Gore and told us to get over it.

Ill means, ill ends. A campaign that "clinches" a nomination by propagating lies about what it means to clinch is not going to end well. We've been here before.

It's the lying. The lying. Always the lying.

NOTE RonkInSeattle has a good way to look at the period after June 3 and before the convention:

The good-looking, smooth-talking stranger stood at your door, asking only a moment of your time. Later on, you stood there telling your Significant Other how you canceled a bunch of accounts, transferred a bunch of assets, and signed the both of you up for a Lifetime Subscription to … well … you’re not sure what it was, precisely, are you?

Well, “everybody” isn’t buying in, but a lot of people who should know better bought in the heat of the moment. You might be one of them. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — statutory Cooling Off Periods apply to certain sales transactions for good reason.

Indeed. The word that should be in the back of every SD's mind is "implosion." Sure, the map not the math says vote Hillary (only the EC counts, remember, professionals?). But SDs are also going to need more than reason to express buyer's remorse over Obama. They're going to need a narrative. And somewhere, right now, I'm betting that narrative is being constructed. Be a shame if it ever had to be used, but you can't make a latte without any beans. Eh?

TROLL PROPHYLACTIC Yes, Hillary's a politician. Yes, Hillary is not a saint. Yes, this gotcha or that gotcha. But what Hillary is not lying about is the entire process by which we elect a President. There are lies, and then there are Big Lies. Which'd you rather?

UPDATE New math from Obama:

His campaign was offering some new delegate math — before the last votes were cast.

Because of how the party allocates its delegates, Obama almost certainly cannot win the nomination based on the 86 pledged delegates yet to be claimed in the final three contests. But his advisers project that he needs just 25 to 28 more superdelegates to come aboard by the end of the primaries to put him over the top.

Changing stories always make me suspicious. Especially when the first story was all about inevitability....