I hope Clinton supporters don't gloat - I haven't done that despite the delegate count - let's have a reasonable discussion.

Obama has been running against McCain AND Clinton since February and has still been triumphing. In the meantime Clinton has only token GOP opposition and is even BACKED UP by Republicans when she hits on Obama.  I can't even imagine how his numbers will look when it's just McCain.

The "map not math" people who do not believe he is the presumptive nominee (I guess they also have a huge problem with Bill declaring himself the nominee in April of 1992, before the end of the primaries?) will come here screaming that the press HATES Hillary, which could not be further from the truth - the political press is getting their best ratings in years. When Hillary is up they tear Obama down and when Obama is up they tear Hillary down. They have a vested interest in keeping this horse race running.

To be honest, there is only so much you can do with this kind of data.  My guess is that, were we to fastforward to August 1st, either democratic candidate would be a significant favorite against McCain as the party consolidates.

That said, I do think HRC would be a somewhat more likely to win, for a couple reasons.

1. I think she ultimately has an easier and more straight-forward map.  Its the Kerry states plus either Ohio or Florida, two states really tailor made to her demographic strengths.  Obama has more ways to win but none of them are as close to being a slam dunk as HRC's path.  He does, however, have a better chance of winning a true landslide.

2. There is simply more variance in an Obama candidacy, and when you are ahead because of structural factors like party id discrepancy, as either democratic nominee would be, then you want to minimize variance.  I think two things are key here.

First, Clinton's strengths match up better with McCain because they mirror him more.  Everybody knows that the GOP will attempt to run on some combination of experience and foreign policy against Obama, with race and the perception that he unpatriotic unfortunately lurking as the wild cards.  They don't have an obvious strategy against Clinton, who fares a lot better in head-to-heads against McCain in terms of who is more trusted on foreign policy and who doesn't have the race issue to deal with.  I'm not saying Obama couldn't successfully deflect those attacks.  But there is more of an opening against him, and thus higher variance in the eventual result.

Second is the question of the so called "October Surprise," much derided in some quarters.  Clinton is less vulnerable to this not only because her past is much more known, but also because personality is not such a big part of her campaign.  People have known for ages that she's not particularly trustworthy and has lots of dubious ties.  Its part of the package and they support her anyway because of other strengths.  Obama's candidacy is much more based on the idea of his ethics and trustworthiness.  There's a lot more room to fall in that respect.  The potential October surprises out there are also much more toxic because some of them engage controversial issues of both race and patriotism.  It's unfortunately almost impossible to have this conversation rationally on the blogs without being flamed these days or being perceived as engaging in negative attacks against Obama.  But consider the rumor that circulated yesterday about a tape existing of Michele Obama railing against "whitey."  Is this rumor probably bs?  Yes.  Is it or something like it completely implausible? Unfortunately, the answer is no.  And the unfortunate reality is that a tape like that would be basically fatal for his candidacy.  I have worries of a lesser magnitude about Ayers.  Frankly, I don't really care personally about this connection but I don't believe Obama's assertion that Ayers was just a guy in his neighborhood.  There is too much smoke there - Obama and Michele both working for the same law firm as Bernardine Dorhn, Ayers tabbing Obama to be Chairman of the Board of the Annenberg Challenge when Obama was basically a nobody associate at a minor firm, etc.  I hope you don't take these thoughts as attacks on Obama.  I just think there is an element of risk about his background that is a much higher than with HRC, because his candidacy is more based on his personality and because his potential baggage is not just run-of-the-mill corruption stuff but engages potentially explosive issues like race and patriotism.

In the end, I think they're both favorites to win, as almost any democrat should be in this electoral climate.  But I think there are a lot fewer "game changers" for the GOP running against Hillary than against Obama.  To use a football analogy, we're up 10 points at halftime.  Hillary has a great defense and a good ground game to eat clock and minimize the number of possessions each team will get in the second half.  Obama has a weaker defense and an amazing passing game.  He could throw for a bunch of touchdowns and completely blow out the GOP, but he also could toss a few picks.