Hillary Clinton has won in Pennsylvania, but it isn’t by a margin wide enough to stop the doubts surrounding her candidacy. Will she be able to convince super delegates that she has what it takes to win against McCain? Then there are party elders and fund raisers. Talk still abounds that without the popular vote, one of these groups should tell her to step down. I’ll let CNN go on about this…but personally I what will happen if the battle goes all the way to the convention in August. Here’s what I found:

From a US News and World Report Article: Obama, Clinton, Head Toward Contested Convention

…the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could end up being decided at a “brokered convention.” But just what does that mean? The last truly “brokered” convention was in 1952, in Chicago. That year, Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, won the Democratic nomination. Party bosses, following the wishes of then President Harry Truman, put Stevenson’s name on the ballot and all but hand-picked him to be their party’s candidate. The convention, historians wrote, was “brokered” in Stevenson’s favor.

In the decades since, both parties have adopted stricter rules and more formal nominating schedules. One crucial change among Democrats came in 1982, when the party introduced “superdelegates.” By official act, all congressmen, governors, and a number of party officials were dubbed superdelegates and given a single vote at the convention, to be counted with the votes of the regular delegates that had been assigned by the state primaries.

To win the Democratic nomination, Clinton and Obama need a simple majority of the 4,049 delegates at stake, i.e., 2,025. Eighty percent of those delegates are awarded through primaries; the remaining 20 percent (796) are superdelegates. In a scenario in which Obama and Clinton continue to split the primaries, they will both find themselves well short of a majority. At that point the superdelegates, who don’t have to pledge their vote until the party convention in August, become relevant.

As of now, Clinton and Obama are actively wooing superdelegates and lining up pledges in advance of the convention. Clinton claimed an early lead on this front, thanks to her party connections, although Obama aides say that they are now catching up.

In a unique twist, there is also the outside chance of a more classic form of brokering. The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, has pledged not to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida as punishment for the decision by those states to hold early primaries. Clinton, who won those primaries, has said she will fight to have them seated.

The primary season ends June 3rd. That’s 9 states and 501 delegates left to split…and I do mean split.