This is how it starts. I had to step away from my computer for a bit after reading it, because I slapped myself in the forehead so hard that I detached both retinas.

If you think the 2016 presidential campaign is already wild, imagine where we’d be without Democratic superdelegates. Bernie Sanders might be the next President.

Those sentences are wrong. 0-for-2. But we'll get to that.

The 74-year-old socialist won West Virginia’s primary on Tuesday, his 19th victory and second in a row. He still trails Hillary Clinton 1,719 to 1,425 in bound delegates, by CNN’s count, but he’s won a majority of the delegates since March 1. If he sweeps the final 10 primaries and caucuses, he might take the lead among bound delegates heading into the Democratic convention in July.

1. It wasn't really his second in a row, since Hillary Clinton won the Guam caucus over the weekend. That didn't do much to help her delegate totals, but then again Sanders's West Virginia win didn't do much to help his, either. In Guam, she netted one delegate. In West Virginia, he netted seven. In his best state, Washington, he netted 47. In hers, Texas, she netted 72.

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2. He does still trail Clinton in pledged delegates by a wide margin -- but he has not won a majority of the delegates since March 1. I rely on Daniel Nichanian's delegate tallies because the Ph.D. student tracks the numbers obsessively. And from March 2 on, Clinton has earned 1,112 delegates to Sanders's 1,021. He has won the most since March 15, the day that Clinton won Florida and Ohio by wide margins and essentially locked up the nomination -- but just 29 more delegates, to be precise.

3. The only way that he can take the lead among pledged delegates by July is if he has huge wins in California (where Clinton has a decent lead) and New Jersey (where Clinton holds a giant lead). Those two states provide two-thirds of the delegates that are left. We looked at this on Wednesday: Even an apocalyptic final few contests for Clinton still has her in the lead in pledged delegates.

Notice the assumptions that go into these projections!

Notice that the Journal doesn't bother explaining the scale of that "sweep." Winning a state narrowly does him no good. So: 1 for 6.

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But then there are the superdelegates, the Democratic officeholders who can vote their preference and who overwhelmingly favor Mrs. Clinton. Of the 712 superdelegates, CNN counts 516 for the former first lady and 41 for the forlorn Senator from Vermont. This means she needs only 148 more delegates to clinch a majority for the nomination. As the primary season ends, Democratic voters are exhibiting a profound case of buyer’s remorse about Mrs. Clinton as their nominee, but she’s being rescued by the establishment.

The numbers on the superdelegates are generally right: Clinton has a massive lead among superdelegates. She does only need 148 more superdelegates to clinch -- but she'll get those 148 delegates in California and New Jersey, easily. (The two states offer 601 delegates total, so even if Clinton only wins 33 percent of the total, she'll get more than 148.)

As we've noted, though, allocating those superdelegates proportionally still has Hillary Clinton clinching on June 7. By the time the race is over, Clinton won't need a majority of superdelegates to be the winner, because she'll still have a big majority of pledged delegates.

Nor is it the case that Democrats broadly are having "buyer's remorse," suggesting that voters in early states regret backing Clinton. Some probably do, sure. But Clinton's been at or around 50 percent support consistently since Feb. 1. Undecided voters moved to Sanders, but there's little sign that Clinton's support has collapsed. In recent weeks, her lead over Sanders has increased.

2 for 8.

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Here’s another irony: The superdelegates favor Mrs. Clinton in large part because they think she’d be the stronger candidate against Donald Trump, but Mr. Sanders does far better in head-to-head polls against the Republican. A Dartmouth College poll has Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by five points in New Hampshire, but Mr. Sanders leads by 21. This week’s Quinnipiac poll has the Burlington bank basher doing better than Mrs. Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This is all true! Nice work, Journal.

Granted, there are likely reasons that Sanders outperforms Clinton nationally and in those swing states -- and there's a clear reason that Sanders is doing better in New Hampshire. But we'll give them this one. 4 for 10.

What the Journal is arguing, though, is that superdelegates should be tempted to ignore months of voting from actual Democrats and give a lopsided majority of their votes to Bernie Sanders on the off-chance that polls conducted six months before the election pitting an unpopular Republican nominee against a largely untested and seldom-attacked Democrat turn out to reflect the actual state of play in November. And that they ignore that Clinton beats Trump, too, but by less.

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Anyway. We come to the last graph, and the Journal gives away the ballgame.

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Mrs. Clinton has proven to be a lousy candidate, unappealing even to millions of Democrats. Mr. Trump is probably the weakest candidate Republicans could nominate, yet could Mrs. Clinton be the one Democrat who could lose to Mr. Trump? Maybe Democrats should consider a contested convention.

For what it's worth, a minority of Democrats have opposed Clinton. A majority of Republicans have opposed Trump. (More Republicans have voted against Trump, in fact, then Democrats have voted for Clinton.)

But it's that last line -- "Maybe Democrats should consider a contested convention" -- that is the point of the piece. The editorial board knows that it's just waving its hands and pulling rabbits from hats. Its goal is not to present a logical, rigorous case for why Sanders should be the nominee; its goal is to foment dissension and disruption within the party that it hopes loses in November.