This week, after Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in Kentucky, I wrote that she might become the Al Gore of 2008 — that is, the winner of the popular vote but loser of the election.

If you start with the votes Clinton has won in the Democratic race so far, I wrote, and add the ones she won in Florida, but don’t count any from Michigan, where opponent Barack Obama was not on the ballot, then Clinton is within striking distance of Obama going into the final primaries of the race.

And if she were to win big in Puerto Rico, then she might become the top Democratic vote-getter, although Obama would win the nomination on the strength of his delegate lead.

Therefore, Al Gore.

Saying something like that can make some people very angry in these touchy last days of the Democratic campaign.

“Moron. Liar. Idiot. Hack,” wrote one reader. He was referring to me.

“This article is just silly,” wrote another.

“You’re either shilling for the Clintons or poorly informed,” wrote yet another.

Well, I may be a moron, a liar, an idiot or a hack, but don’t accuse me of shilling for the Clintons. It just doesn’t make sense to me that some Democrats would rather not count the votes of fellow Democrats in two rather large, and extremely important, states.

This is the party that went bonkers over 537 votes in Florida in 2000, and now they want to ignore 1.7 million Democrats in the same state, plus 600,000 in Michigan?

Many of my correspondents pointed out that Clinton agreed going in not to count the results from Florida and Michigan.

That’s certainly true, but I think it’s also reasonable to argue that that was then, and this is now.

The fact is, we often don’t care much about votes if they don’t really matter. We don’t hold recounts in states won by landslides.

Similarly, if Obama were 1,200 delegates ahead, we wouldn’t be paying so much attention to Florida and Michigan. But it’s close, so some solution has to be found.

And in any event, why are the Democratic Party’s rules so immutable? Certainly Democrats haven’t always had such reverence for rules in the past.

To cite one small example: In 2002, when ethics problems drove Robert Torricelli out of the New Jersey Senate race after the deadline for putting a new candidate on the ballot, Democrats protested that the rules — in this case, an actual state law — shouldn’t apply.

They took the issue to court and won, apparently untroubled by the prospect of changing the rules mid-game.

Now, however, some of those same people argue that you just can’t do that.

What is at stake is not the nomination — Obama will still win the delegate race unless there is some completely unforeseen mass movement of superdelegates to Clinton.

What is at stake is Obama’s standing as the clear, unquestioned leader of the party.

When the winner is the guy who didn’t get the most popular votes, some people won’t be happy — just ask all those Democrats who sported “Re-Defeat Bush” stickers on their cars in 2004.

Clinton’s presence as the popular-vote winner, even though Obama won the nomination by the rules, would diminish Obama.

If that scenario comes to pass, she’ll be a reminder that many, many Democrats wanted someone else to be their nominee.

And that’s why some people are so touchy these days.

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it