To the Victor Go the Points

PHILADELPHIA — When is a win not a win? When the winner is Senator Clinton.

Time was, you won an election and the press pronounced you the winner. No more. This time, the press announced that you had to beat the point spread — a point spread determined by the press.

"If Clinton wins by more than 10 points," CNN's Bill Schneider decreed, "her campaign will have new momentum and she will soldier on."

At least 10 points, Politico's Ken Vogel said. "Hillary Clinton needs to win by double digits," he proposed.

"At least 10 percentage points," the Los Angeles Times concurred, citing unnamed superdelegates.

Foreigners wanted in on the game. Britain's Guardian newspaper said Mrs. Clinton "needs to win by a margin of 10 percent or more."

The Washington Post's magnanimous chief political writer, Dan Balz, suggested alternatives. "Some say Clinton needs to win by 10 points," he wrote. "Others say eight points. Some say ... anything over five points would be a respectable victory."

"More than five points," Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report suggested.

It fell to CNN's Wolf Blitzer to seek an end to the madness. "A win is a win, isn't it?" he asked.

"Not necessarily," Republican strategist John Feehery replied. "I think she's got to blow him out."

Clearly, setting the spread was not a science — but there was some justification for it. Before yesterday, Mrs. Clinton trailed Senator Obama in the popular vote, delegates won and states won — and it will be difficult for her to persuade the party's superdelegates to make her the Democratic presidential nominee if she can't win one of those categories.

Even the easiest of those hurdles, a deficit of 700,000 in the popular vote, can't be erased without lopsided wins in Pennsylvania and the remaining primary states. That left commentators free to decide just how lopsided the win had to be.

Bill Hemmer at Fox News, hardly known for Clinton sympathies, offered that "she needs to win by a landslide in order to have a chance."