HRC Campaign: Obama Is Frontrunner

Hillary Clinton's campaign concedes that Barack Obama is the party's frontrunner.

In a conference call with reporters late this morning, senior adviser Harold Ickes gave a lecture on delegate mathmetmatics from the Clinton perspective, acknowledging that Clinton trails Obama by (at least) 75 delegates. Clinton would do well in many of the remaining sixteen delegate selection contests, Ickes said, but "both candidates will need a number of automatic delegates to clinch the nomination." Ickes argued that since Obama would need nearly as many superdelegates to win the nomination as Clinton does now, it's disingenous for him to argue that the nomination ought to be decided by the pledged delegate count alone.

Apropos of not much, Ickes added "We think Mr. Obama is the frontrunner."

Unstated was the expectation that Clinton's victories in the future should be interpreted through that lens.