Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is willing to take her fight to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to the convention if the two states want to go that far. In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton was asked whether she would support the states if they continue the fight.
The presidential candidate said Wednesday, “Yes I will. I will, because I feel very strongly about this.”
All well and good, I suppose. But, at this point this seems to me to be nothing more than a combination of pandering and denial.
Even if Florida and Michigan are counted, I don’t think that she can overtake Obama’s delegate lead.
Florida would have had 210 delegates, and even if a delegation is seated, the odds are that that number (as per party rules) would be halved. I am not sure what the exact allocation would be, but Clinton won 50% of the vote in Florida, with Obama at 33% and Edwards at 14%. For simplicity’s sake, let’s give Clinton 50% + some surplus, since she won the state (59), Obama 33% (36) and 14% to Edwards (15).
That would take the pledged delegate count (based on CNN’s estimates, currently at 1,656 for Obama v. 1,498 for Clinton) to:
1707 Obama (assuming he gets Edwards’ as well–but even without them he is at 1693)
1557 Clinton
And, of course, if the delegation isn’t halved, the gap will remain the same. Even if all of Edwards’ delegates go with Clinton, Obama is still ahead.
Ok, how about Michigan? There are 156 delegates from Michigan. If we half that we get 78. And since Clinton was on the ballot and Obama wasn’t, let’s just give Clinton all of them! That takes her number to 1635 to Obama’s 1707.
What? Not fair, you say? You’re right! Clinton deserves all the delegates without any that halving business! That would give her 1713 to Obama’s 1707!
So, I guess if she can deny Obama any Michigan delegates (which I suspect ain’t gonna happen), she can overtake him in delegates (but only if we stop the primaries right now).
And there you go: the road to the nomination!
Update: At the Economist’s Democracy in America blog, they note:
NBC News has Barack Obama leading Hillary Clinton by 171 delegates. That means if she wins a mere 100% of the remaining 86 pledged delegates from Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, she will be only be 85 delegates behind. Then, presuming (as we should) that she will get the Rules and Bylaws Committee to seat Florida and Michigan entirely in her favour (including zero delegates for Mr Obama in Michigan—the people’s voices must be heard after all, and none of those voices spoke his name), she nets 58 delegates, and is behind just 27. Then assuming 260 or so undecided superdelegates (remember, Florida and Michigan will be fully seated, including their supers), only 55% have to be convinced to overrule the elected delegates.
That certainly seems likely, yes?
Sphere: Related Content
May 21st, 2024 at 5:01 pm
I’ve contended for years that Bill and Hillary Clinton are both clinically narcissistic.
What more evidence do we need?
She will go to the convention because she is unable, personally, not to, regardless of the odds.
May 21st, 2024 at 6:35 pm
[...] at Memeorandum: The Moderate Voice, MSNBC, PoliBlog (TM), NO QUARTER, TPM Election Central, The Confluence, Balloon Juice, Real Clear Politics, Big Head DC [...]
May 22nd, 2024 at 9:07 am
[...] Yesterday I made some quick and flippant calculations as to what would happen if the Michigan and Florida delegations were seated. Poblano at FiveThirtyEight.com has gone well beyond the flippant and did the real work and comes to the following conclusions: If the Florida and Michigan delegations are seated as half-delegates, Obama needs only about 10 percent of the outstanding superdelegates in order to clinch the nomination; Clinton would need 90 percent. If Florida and Michigan are fully seated, Obama needs about 20 percent of the remaining undeclared delegates; Clinton needs roughly 80 percent. [...]
May 30th, 2024 at 4:21 am
Clinton has taken Kentucky and Obama has done it in Oregon.
The Democratic race for nomination is still very much alive – and most likely to be decided by superdelegates – as CNN points out clearly
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/20/primary.wrap/
If you’re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven’t done so yet, please write a message to each of your state’s superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
Obama Supporters:
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It’s that easy…
Clinton Supporters too …. !
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?! Those are really worth !
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It’s that easy…