On the heels of Adam Nagourney's survey yesterday of Hillary Clinton's difficult strategy for winning the nomination, Ben Smith of The Politico gets deep into the math of HRC's effort to claim a majority of the overall popular vote. He concludes, like many observers, that absent a deal to "count" popular votes from MI and FL, HRC's goal of a popular vote majority depends on either big landslide wins in the upcoming states she's expected to do well in (PA, KY, WV and PR), or surprise showings in states where Obama is thought to be leading (e.g., NC, OR and IN). Complicating the picture even more is the fact that four caucus states (IA, NV, ME and WA) have not reported, and may be incapable of tabulating, actual raw votes.

Smith also links to a useful if complicated chart at RealClearPolitics that displays various popular vote configurations. It has Obama up by just over 700,000 votes without FL, MI or the four non-popular-vote-reporting caucus states, three of which were won by Obama.