But who says the popular vote counts in choosing a nominee? Those are not the party rules, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed out on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“It’s a delegate race,” Pelosi said. “The way the system works is that the delegates choose the nominee.”

The Obama campaign knows the Clinton campaign has no intention of accepting that.

And the Clinton campaign has already sold — with mild success — the notion that the leader in the popular vote has some claim to the nomination.

If Clinton manages to get a popular vote lead, she will use that to persuade party insiders — the 794 so-called superdelegates — to give her the nomination. A front-page story in The New York Times on Sunday quoted two undecided superdelegates as saying the popular vote will be something they consider in deciding for whom to vote.

And Wolfson made clear to me that what the Obama campaign considers “commandeering,” the Clinton campaign sees as a legitimate path to victory.

“I think the automatic [i.e., super] delegates are going to make their assessment on a number of different criteria,” Wolfson said. “The overall delegate count, the popular vote, momentum, states won by each candidate [not just the number, but the size], the coalitions of each candidate, who matches up best with John McCain, and who would be the best president.”

The Obama campaign says it is willing to compete on every front, but it views the Clinton strategy as one of desperation.

“They are throwing long,” Axelrod told me. “They are running up whatever roadblocks they can. She has her sight set on this nomination as a personal goal, and she has been tenacious — as we would expect — in pursuit of that goal.”

But, Axelrod believes, there can be a downside to such tenacity.

“This is an election in which, fundamentally, people want change and being the consummate Washington inside player doesn’t convince people that this is change we need,” he said. “I don’t think our voters’ attitude is that we should win at all costs and through all means. I don’t think that is what our folks believe.”

Which is a very high-road way of looking at things. But does the high road always lead to the White House?