Just so you know, there are 217 pledged delegates left to win in the Democratic nominating process. Let me use the somewhat imprecise Slate Delegate Calculator to give you an idea of how those delegates might break. Clinton has a 55-27 edge in Pollster.com’s poll of polls for West Virginia. Let’s round that up to a nice 64-36 outcome: Clinton 18-10, +8 pledged delegates. Clinton has a 62-28 advantage in Kentucky. Let’s round that up to a 67-33 outcome: Clinton 34-17, +17 Delegates. Recent polls in Oregon give Obama a lead of about 51-42. Let’s round that up to a 55-45 outcome: Obama 29-23, Obama +6. There’s one ancient poll from March that has Clinton winning Puerto Rico 50-37. Let’s round it up to 57-43: Clinton 31-24, Clinton +7. There’s another ancient poll from South Dakota that has Obama up 46-34. Let’s round it up to 56-44: Obama 8-7, Obama +1. There are no polls for Montana, so let’s just use the same 56-44 number that we used for South Dakota: Obama 9-7, Obama +2. Now let’s put it in an eye-popping chart.
5/13 West Virginia- Clinton +8
5/20 Kentucky- Clinton +17 (cumulative: Clinton +25)
5/20 Oregon- Obama +6 (cumulative: Clinton +19)
6/01 Puerto Rico- Clinton +7 (cumulative: Clinton +26)
6/03 South Dakota- Obama +1 (cumulative: Clinton +25)
6/03 Montana- Obama +2 (cumulative: Clinton +23)Total of remaining delegates: Clinton 120, Obama 97
Total pledged delegates: Obama 1685, Clinton 1542 (net: Obama +143)
Now, I want you to look at what the Clinton campaign is spinning out today in the Washington Post:
Clinton advisers sketched out a scenario that they said could still deliver the nomination, though they acknowledged privately that the odds are long. It includes winning three of the final six primaries — West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico — and holding down Obama’s margin in Oregon or even winning the state. Obama is favored in Montana and South Dakota.
In the above scenario, I gave Clinton huge blowout wins in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. (If she were actually to win Oregon she might improve her situation, but the delegate count won’t change much). And, even granting this very favorable scenario, she only nets 23 delegates and loses the overall pledged delegate count by 143 votes. The Clintons know this, which is why there is more to her plan.
Next, Clinton still hopes to win the battle over seating disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan with full voting rights. Keeping alive this fight, at a minimum, gives the Clinton team the opportunity to argue that Obama will need more than 2,025 delegates to win the nomination. The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee plans to meet May 31 to take up the two states’ challenges.
If all the Florida and Michigan delegates were seated and voting, the winning number would be 2,209. Clinton’s campaign wants superdelegates to accept its logic that Obama is further from the magic number than his campaign says.
Before I go on here, I want to point out that Obama’s projected 1685 pledged delegates added to his 260 committed superdelegates equals 1945 total delegates. That is mere 81 short of a majority of 2025.5. There are approximately 287 outstanding uncommitted superdelegates, so Obama only needs 30% of them to win a majority. Even if Clinton wins 200 out of the 287 remaining supers, she still loses by one vote.
But what if we add in Michigan and Florida, exactly the way that Clinton wants to add them: with full voting rights and, say, Obama getting the uncommitted vote in Michigan?
In that case:
Michigan:
Clinton 77
Obama 53
Clinton +24Florida:
Clinton 105
Obama 67
Edwards 13
Clinton +38Total:
Clinton 182
Obama 110
Clinton +72
In this new scenario, Obama would finish with 2055 delegates to Clinton’s 1995 delegates. With 287 remaining superdelegates, Obama would need 154 (45%) and Clinton would need 214 (55%)to gain the nomination.
Mind you, Clinton would only get these odds if she wins West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico in blowouts and she gets Florida and Michigan seated with no penalty, and she doesn’t lose any more net superdelegates between now and then. And even in this very rosy scenario, she’d still face the challenge of getting 55% of the supers to give her their endorsement. And that would be in spite of losing the pledged delegate count by 71 votes and losing 32 states and, quite likely, losing the popular vote. Although if Clinton wins the remaining contests by these margins (worth an approximate net of about 280,000 votes) and you give Clinton all her votes for Florida (net +295,000) and Michigan (net +328,000) and you deny Obama any votes from Michigan, she might just squeeze out a popular vote win of about 100,000 votes.
So, when Hillary Clinton talks about carrying on her campaign, these are the odds she is facing. And the superdelegates need to decide whether indulging Clinton’s indisputable right to continue her campaign is worth it. How will getting blown out in demographically unfriendly states strengthen Obama? How will it help him to have to spend time, money, and energy fighting for votes in Puerto Rico, and among Democrats, generally?
Finally, Clinton needs to prevent Obama from winning endorsements from a substantial number of uncommitted superdelegates before the primaries end. “If enough move, that’s it,” one Clinton adviser said.
Do you hear that? “If enough [superdelegates] move, that’s it.” She has no way of winning, but she can’t even continue unless the superdelegates are willing to trade all the lost opportunity and potential damage of further campaigning (which does indecisively favor Clinton) for an effort not to offend the Clintons. Why indulge them? On balance, what is to be gained?
Here’s the thing. I don’t have a problem with Hillary staying in this until Obama wins it, meaning, until the supers throw the switch and make it official. CAVEAT: I don’t have a problem if this happens by the first week in June.
But if the supers let this drag out over the summer, I’ll have to conclude that some of them are closet republicans working against our party’s best interests. And I’ll take names and make sure to let others know who those people are so we can replace them as quickly as possible when THEIR seats are up for grabs.
The Obama supporters are a powerful force. The supers aren’t dumb enough to think their futures don’t depend on our support.
Meanwhile, Clinton has finally gone there:
Okay. Forget what I said elsewhere. Shut her down NOW!!!!!
Yes, Senator Clinton, there is a pattern emerging here, but it’s not the one you think…
superdelegates=jellyfish
Booman Tribune ~ For Superdelegates: The Math
Your logic is impeccable. Obama will be the nominee. The question for democrats is how to maximise his chances in November. Can anyone doubt that the long, tough and protracted campaign has strengthened Obama as a candidate?
His greatest weakness going into this campaign was his perceived inexperience and the fact that he was largely unknown to many of the electorate. Voters like to know how the candidates will perform in a crisis under tough conditions. This is McCain’s greatest area of strength.
What the Clinton campaign has done is to replicate the conditions of a tough campaign this fall. It has given Obama a dry run, and the electorate an opportunity to gauge how he will perform under difficult conditions. He has performed well and his name recognition has gone through the roof. The Democrats have monopolised almost all media and political discourse. Both Obama and Clinton have become much more electable as a result, and both are now building a lead over McCain that is becoming more and more secure.
So forget the faint hearts and shrinking violets who are bleating for an end to this campaign. That you should have been so lucky to have such a sustained monopoly of public discourse! Money couldn’t have bough it.
The Superdelegates know this and are trying to squeeze the last few episodes of drama out of this storyline. They know that once this is over the Republicans will start to be able to compete on even terms again. Many will argue that we have had one sequel too many. But will the public really remain as engaged in the process once this is all over? The real National campaign won’t start until September, so what’s to be lost by squeezing out a few more episodes out of this drama and keeping the public engaged and the blogosphere hyperventilating about the infamy of the Clinton campaign. She has done the Democrats the favour of making Obama electable.
The Democrats have had many years of practice of nominating soft, liberal, elitest and very worthy candidates who get burned in the heat of a real campaign. Obama would have been no different but for the assistance of the Clinton machine.
All of this doesn’t mean that Clinton “deserves to be on the ticket”. That is a different calculation entirely – and almost completely based on any electoral advantage the VP candidate will provide to the Democratic Ticket.
Obama should forget about Clinton now and reframe his campaign entirely around defeating McCain. It is his own fault if he allows Clinton to distract him. She has no realistic chance of defeating him. The Superdelegates will throw the switch when the Clinton campaign no longer adds value to their all but annointed candidate.
The campaign he will get from the GOP will get much worse in due course. She is providing oxygen and motivation for his team and he should maximise this – but not return the favour – he should now channel all his energies against McCain.
And the whining blogosphere he should ignore completely. They know how to creates Deans and Kerry’s; they don’t know how to win a general election. Sorry guys! No doubt you will shoot the messenger! I am not trying to be gratuitously offensive in saying all of this, but as Booman said in his last piece – you need Obama more than he needs you.
In WV, KY and PR, there may be movement by voters towards the presumptive nominee, which would reduce her margins. I obviously can’t quantify this, but if the media narrative is that Hillary is a longshot at best, some voters will want to “go with the winner”.
Well John Zogby, pollster, writing for the BBC website has this: 30 super-delegates to endorse Obama within next 48 hours
To all intents and purposes the race for the Democratic nomination is over.
Yesterday there was a theory that Clinton is continuing because she was looking for a graceful exit. That strikes me as bullshit, unless “graceful” means squeezing in as many $1000 dollar-a-plates as possible before June. And that “grace” doesn’t seem to extend to her staff and her followers.
After looking at Obama’s favorables/unfavorables among voters in WV…. I’m thinking closer to 70-30 than 65-35.
Have you seen the tone in the pro-Hillary blog comments? Paranoid and hate-filled. “I’ll never vote for that dirty racist crook Nobama, if he steals this from our brave girl then McCain gets my vote, at least he’s honest.” That’s my summary, but really that’s about all they’ve got.
My guess is that the remaining SD’s don’t want to get in the middle of that, and are waiting for Hillary and Obama to find a graceful exit for her, so her deranged flying monkeys don’t take it out on them and the party with their votes or by making a mess of the convention.
Seeing that quote from Hillary about how she’s staying for her white people, it doesn’t seem like she’s co-operating in the needed resolution.
If I had to guess, a lot of Hillary supporters have just walked away from those blogs. They are off dealing with this on their own.
In a couple of weeks we can look at the traffic and number of page views for the various pro-Hillary sites and see where they are going. My guess is that readership is dropping off.