Pennsylvania falls on Hillary’s side of the fence, with her campaign scooping up a mole hill of delegates (82) and a mountain of tender cash money ($3.5 million). The marginal victory virtually guarantees Obama’s lead in delegates and Clinton’s resolve to continue the campaign until the political EKG of the Democratic Party reads flatter than Milla Jovovich’s figure. It guarantees little more than a clear victory by the rules of the game and a vehement sentiment to change them before time runs out.

The concept everyone supporting Clinton’s campaign rehearsed into sound bites last night was the “popular vote.” With Pennsylvania, the campaign contends, Clinton has an insurmountable lead in terms of actual votes that compels respect from superdelegates. They argue that the popular vote holds the constituency that should govern which direction the superdelegates swing. With a significant break Clinton’s way, victory is assured.

The argument is particularly compelling to young Democrats. Disillusioned by the last presidential election and disenfranchised by the one before, the popular vote is largely the only scorecard we consult. For the generation growing up listening to Green Day and playing Nintendo, the idea of the individual carries enormous weight. We were raised as a collection of empowered minorities, less Spartacus and more Revenge of the Nerds. A single person in our formulative years had the power to save princesses, repel armies, and sell unprecedented numbers of records. This individual complex, by either design or disaster, is ingrained in everyone under thirty. Every single person has the ability to save the day and get the girl, suggesting for each of us Rainmen who grew up thinking he/she was Rambo that at the very least our vote should count. For us -- the fuel for the social network and the fonts of user generated content -- the popular vote is the only vehicle of democracy that makes any sense. The idea of someone speaking for us is alien. We click a link and implicitly cast our votes daily into systems of many millionfold the complexity of the American electoral system with a result that we’ve grown to specifically expect.

When we press play, we expect to hear something.

Thus, when Terry McAuliffe makes the ten second spot on Headline News talking about the popular vote, it is largely to we the young that he speaks. The problem is that, as Newsweek points out, the math just doesn’t work. The Democratic Primary is just not set up to produce a popular vote count, meaning the water ahead remains murky for who will gain the nomination. Between the early primaries, the caucuses, and the fifty different ways our fifty states run these elections, the realization of the mainstream media is that the win just isn’t there to be found. No one can get the delegate counts in the elections and no one can calculate the popular vote.

This will be the third national election in a row where our generation will have no idea who the fuck was supposed to win. Old folks complaining about the lack of voter participation in youth will have this year exhausted the hot gas in their bloated windbags.

Three in a row. We’re done with this shit.

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