Follow the numbers
Sean Wilentz makes the interesting point that if Democrat nominating rules more resembled the practice of the GOP, Senator Clinton would have 2107 of the 2024 delegates needed (before superdelegates) for the nomination if the next contests go as expected:
If the Democrats heeded the “winner takes all” democracy that prevails in American politics, and that determines the president, Clinton would be comfortably in front. In a popular-vote winner-take-all system, Clinton would now have 1,743 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1,257. If she splits the 10 remaining contests with Obama, as seems plausible, with Clinton taking Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Puerto Rico, and Obama winning North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Guam, she’d pick up another 364 pledged delegates. She’d have 2,107 before a single superdelegate was wooed. You need 2,024 to be the Democratic nominee. Game over…
But Clinton does not now have 1,743 delegates. According to CNN estimates, Clinton has about 1,242 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1,413. Most of that total is based on the peculiar way that delegates are apportioned in 2008…
Team Obama doesn’t want to count the votes of Michigan and Florida. (And let’s note that in a winner-take-all system, Clinton would still be leading in delegates, 1,430 to 1,257, even without Michigan and Florida.) Under the existing system, Obama’s current lead in the popular vote would nearly vanish if the results from Michigan and Florida were included in the total, and his lead in pledged delegates would melt almost to nothing. The difference in the popular vote would fall to 94,005 out of nearly 27 million cast thus far — a difference of a mere four-tenths of 1 percentage point — and the difference in delegates would plummet to about 30, out of the 2,024 needed to win.
The numbers are a little dizzying, but Wilentz’s is a good point.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I’m sorry, but the Democrats made their bed — delegates, superdelegates, identity politics, open/closed primaries — and they can lie in it.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:06 am
IMHO, with their “every person gets a vote” method of selecting delegates, their objective was to show the evils of the electoral college system. They’ve wanted that changed for some time. Unfortunately it’s backfired on them. Now they’re actually in the position of denying people their vote. In fact, one candidate actually refuses to have two states seated saying he’s “just following the rules.” I thought “every person gets a vote” was the rule they wanted. I hope this is not what we’re in for with the general election.