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Defining 'dominate' Down

From Politico:

"I'm sort of a day-at-a-time person," [Hillary Clinton] said, adding that she has “closed very strongly” and “dominated” Obama since February 20.

According to CNN, on February 20, the delegate math was Obama 1,301 and Hillary Clinton 1,239, for an Obama lead of 62 delegates. Today (again according to CNN) the tally is Obama 2,072 and Clinton 1,916, for an Obama lead of 152. So during the period in which Clinton claims to have "dominated," Obama has in fact more than doubled his lead.

Now, it's true that if you only want to count (how many times have we heard this phrase in the last few months?) pledged delegates, Clinton has slightly outperformed Obama in the 100+ days in question. By my calculation, she has a net gain of 18 pledged delegates over Obama, or just over one percent of the 1,448 pledged delegates that have been awarded during that span. (That will presumably narrow slightly after tomorrow's primaries.)

If that constitutes "dominating," we're clearly going to have to invent a new word to describe what Obama accomplished in February when he, for all intents and purposes, put the race far out of reach.

--Christopher Orr