Just the thought of a Dem nominee who has been selected, not elected makes me chuckle. And the thought of how power-mad the Clintons must be to float this strategy now while simultaneously calling Obama’s primary wins “irrelevant” should remind us all that Hillary’s lines about getting up every morning wanting to help people are just so much noise and nonsense. Cry us another river, Hillary.

A top Hillary Clinton adviser on Saturday boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by rival Barack Obama would be “irrelevant” to their decision…

Harold Ickes, a 40-year party operative charged with winning over superdelegates for the Clinton campaign, made no apologies on Saturday for the campaign’s convention strategy.

“We’re going to win this nomination,” Ickes said, adding that they would do so soon after the last contest on June 7 in Puerto Rico. “You’re not going to see this go to the convention floor.”

Ickes predicted Clinton and Obama would run “neck and neck” in the remaining states and that there would be a “minuscule amount of difference” between the two in pledged delegates.

But he said superdelegates would determine the outcome and side in larger numbers for Clinton, as they “have a sense of what it takes to get elected.”

Having a sense of what it takes to get elected must mean looking at something other than current popular opinion. Current polls have Obama defeating McCain, and Clinton losing to McCain. Polls at this stage are fleeting things, true, but upon what will the superdelegates base deciding for Hillary over the Messiah if not the polls? She’s not any more experienced than Obama is. So far in the primaries she isn’t proving to be any more popular than he is. She looks tired and wasted compared to Obama looking like a man with a mission.

In essence, he argued the party’s 795 superdelegates (Connecticut Independent-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman recently was stripped of his superdelegate status) were in a better position to assess electability and suitability for the presidency than party regulars who will attend the national convention in late August as pledged delegates.

He also said Michigan and Florida, which voted for Clinton, should have delegates seated at the convention even though the national party stripped them for holding early primaries.

Hillary’s electability obviously doesn’t hinge on the value of her word.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe on Saturday blasted Clinton for the strategy.

“The Clinton campaign just said they have two options for trying to win the nomination — attempting to have superdelegates overturn the will of the Democratic voters or change the rules they agreed to at the eleventh hour in order to seat non-existent delegates from Florida and Michigan,” he said in a statement.

Time to pop some popcorn and get ready for the show.