Super delegates can vote however they want. That's the rule. And as far as I'm concerned, they should vote for whoever leads the pledged delegate race or risk a civil war within the party.

Of course, that case is weakened if Clinton were to take away Obama's lead in the popular vote (currently at around 600,000 votes), and I'm sure that must be what Clinton's camp must be hoping for. If she overtakes Obama in the popular vote, it would denote a massive collapse in Obama's campaign that would make his staunchest defenders pause and consider whether he is, truly, the best general election candidate for us. I don't expect it to happen, but it's the Clinton campaign's hail mary.

All that aside, what if the super delegates decided, in the interest of democracy, to vote for the winner of their states? Let's see how that would stack up. I went with popular vote wins, which means Clinton picks up the supers in Nevada and Texas despite losing the delegate count. I'm using the Green Papers delegate counts, which I assume to be accurate but could always be off.

State     Obama   Clinton
IA          12
NH                   8
NV                   9 
SC                   9

AL           8
AK           5
AS                   6
AZ                  11
AR                  12
CA                  70
CO          15
CT          12
DE           8
DA           4
GA          15
ID           5
IL          30
KS           9
MA                  28
MN          16
MO          16
NJ                  20
NM                  12
NY                  50
ND           8
OK                  10
TN                  17
UT           6

LA          10
NE           7
WA          19
ME           8
VI           6

DC          24
MD          29
VA          18

HI           9
WI          18

OH                  21
RI                  12
TX                  35
VT           8

Total      325     330

Obama would love that just fine, up to this point. with his 135-150 pledged delegate lead, he could afford to lose five net delegates factoring the supers this way.

That would also put his current count at around (using NBC's total) 1,691 to Clinton's 1,557. (There are 21 delegates from prior contests still unallocated.)

Let's game this out, however, and apportion the super delegates according to the CW over who will take each of the remaining states:

State     Obama   Clinton

WY           6
MS           7

PA                  29

GU                   5
IN                  12
NC          19

WV                  11

KY                   9
OR          13

MT           8
SD           8

PR                   8

Total       61      74

Now I think Indiana is actually going to be fertile ground for Obama, but I'll keep it with Clinton so I can avoid the easy charges of bias. (I am, but not in this analysis.) Even then, there's not much ground to be made up by Clinton based on a "super delegates vote their states" approach. Obama would lead based on existing tallies and these projections 1,752 to 1,631, or a deficit of 121. She's not going to make that up with the remaining 611 or so remaining pledged delegates.

By the way, if those were split down the middle (rounding up in Clinton's favor), Obama would come out with about 2,057 delegates to Clinton's 1,937.

Obama needs 2,204 2,025 to win. He's the nominee.

Bottom line? She's not going to catch up in the pledged delegate race. She wouldn't gain enough supers by forcing them to vote their states (even though she won the states with the biggest super delegate totals). So what's left?

Absent an epic collapse by Team Obama, her only chance will be coup by super delegate -- cajoling the supers to abandon the will of the voters.

Yes, it is within the rules. But like I said above, that way lies civil war.