The Facts

From Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe:

Last night, Senator Clinton used up her last, best chance to cut appreciably into Barack Obama's elected delegate lead.

She came up short.

In fact, she barely made a dent. At most, she picked up a net gain of 12 delegates -- less than our gain, for example, in Colorado (where we gained 17) or Kansas (where we gained 14). Her gain in Pennsylvania was less than half of our gain in Virginia, where we added to our lead by 25 delegates.

Here's how it breaks out:

After Pennsylvania, we have a lead of at least 159 elected delegates earned through all of the primaries and caucuses so far. We have a total of at least 1493 pledged delegates.

Meanwhile, we've been rapidly gaining ground among the so-called superdelegates (elected leaders and party officials who get a vote to choose our nominee), cutting Senator Clinton's lead from more than 100 early this year to less than 25. We have a total of 238 publicly committed superdelegates.

The total number of delegates needed to secure the nomination is 2,024. That means we are only 293 delegates away from securing the nomination. In less than two weeks, we'll square off in the key battleground states of North Carolina and Indiana, when there will be as many delegates at stake as there were last night in Pennsylvania.

And in addition, Obama has clinched winning the most states and still has a sizable lead in the popular vote. While Clinton likes to complain about caucus states, she likely would have lost them even if they were primary states. If you were to give Obama and Clinton the likely popular vote totals from those states based on their percentages in the caucuses, his lead would be even more substantial.

So, we can continue to drag this thing on and Clinton can continue to role play John McCain, but the fact is, her only way to the nomination is through theft.