A good way to look at what's happening now in the Democratic race is to imagine a court of law: Each side will be presenting its case before a jury -- only in this case, the jury is composed of super-delegates. And so from the Obama campaign, we get this memo from Iowa Governor Chet Culver, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill:

In an attempt to minimize the significance of Barack Obama's success in winning more than twice as many states as Senator Clinton, her campaign's supporters have attempted to diminish the importance of the states where Senator Obama has prevailed.

Senator Obama has scored important victories in each of our states -- states that will play a decisive role in deciding whether or not John McCain will be given the chance to enter the White House and extend George Bush's failed policies for another 4 years.

In each of the 30 primaries and caucuses that Obama has now won, including Mississippi yesterday, he's shown the ability to motivate Democrats to turn out at the polls, win the support of blue collar voters in suburban and rural communities and attract the support of Independents and Republicans. That's the kind of candidate Democrats need to nominate to beat John McCain in November, and it's the kind of leader America needs to bring to Washington the kind of change we can believe in.

The Clinton campaign's argument ignores relevant facts about how significant a role these states played in determining the outcome of the presidential race in 2004. In fact, Obama has won 7 of 9 of the biggest states that were close in the 2004 presidential election and have already selected delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention.

More than half of the votes that Senator Clinton has won so far have come from just five states. It's also worth noting that polls in four of these five states show that Obama would be a stronger general election candidate against McCain than Clinton.

Read the rest of the memo here.

For a fine analysis of using primary data to predict general election outcomes, read Jay Cost.