The media now seems to be pressing Clinton's surrogates hard to wake up to the mathematical reality that most of us saw months ago, that the delegate math is insurmountable. Clinton needs to either win over a large number of superdelegates who already committed to Obama, or else win the undeclared superdelegates by at least a 3 to 1 margin. Reality says any such massive shift of superdelegate allegiance will be towards the candidate the voters chose, not away from it. So what is their response now? All of that math is meaningless because it doesn't count Michigan and Florida. They hope that by getting into an argument over what happened or will happen in Michigan in Florida they can create enough confusion to lead people to believe that really Clinton might have a chance. I'm not going to get into that argument. Instead I'm going to show that even if you do count Michigan and Flordia, Obama is still the nominee.
There are two things we need to consider when looking at the results of contests. The first is how they shape the perception about who "won" the support of the voters. The second is how it effects who the delegates are and how they will vote at the convention. The second question is clearly the more important, but we start with the first question since it can impact how the superdelegates vote.
- So first let's see how MI and FL effect the perception of who "won" the nomination. For this purpose I believe we must count the vote for "uncommitted" in MI as being for Obama. Clinton may say that technically those votes weren't for Obama, but remember here we are looking at perception. It's already asking a lot to take into consideration a contest where Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot. The only way to even remotely make that argument is to concede Obama the votes of the only alternative to Clinton on the ballot. So now let us look at the most natural way to determine the winner, count the pledged delegates. This is how the Democratic Party determined the weight of the voters should be counted at the convention. In contests to date not including FL and MI Obama has about a 166 pledged vote lead (estimates may vary slightly). Counting FL and MI (with uncommitted in MI to Obama) this gets cut to 110. But there are only 217 pledged delegates remaining. So Clinton would have to win these delegates 164 to 53. That's over 75% of the remaining delegates (which includes 3 states where Obama is generally favored). It won't happen. Astute readers may say, what about the approximately 32 delegates Edwards won. Even if you gave those to Clinton the math is sill overwhelming, but remember this is an argument about perception. Clinton can't argue a perception win using the delegates of Edwards.
But wait, says the Clinton campaign, why should we count using this strange delegate system. Just count popular vote. I doubt Democratic party insiders are going to so easily ignore the carefully crafter rules set by the party, but they also don't want people walking away with the impression that the person with most votes lost. So let's count the popular vote, and as Clinton says...count all 50 states. But then it is only fair to count the uncommitted in MI for Obama and to count reasonable estimates for those caucus states that didn't report vote totals. Again this all about perception. According to Real Clear Politics the vote counting FL, MI, and the caucus states has Obama +89,076, but that counts Obama with 0 votes in MI. If we give him the uncommitted this goes up to +327,244. Can Clinton make this up in the remaining contests? Well Poblano gives her generously a net of +230,000 votes in those states. This figure already includes blowouts in West Virginia and Kentucky. Here's another way to look at it. The remaining states (and Puerto Rico) have less population than New York and that state only brought her 317,000 votes. Again it won't happen. And no offense to Puerto Rico, but I don't think hoping for a landslide victory to try to win an already strangely counted popular vote is going to be convincing.
- So even with the count from Michigan and Florida it still appears Obama will win a sizable victory with the people. But maybe if she can get Michigan and Florida seated Clinton will have some chance at winning through superdelegates. After all she will have narrowed the pledged delegate gap, she's currently winning the "would-be" superdelegate in those states by 10 thus further narrowing the gap, and finally there will be over 100 new undeclared delegates (13 Edwards delegates from FL, 55 uncommitted delegates from MI, and 35 undeclared supers from MI&FL). So maybe MI&FL will allow her to pull off the superdelegate coup. But at this point she is no longer using MI & FL to argue that really she is the voter's choice. Instead she is asking to change the rules midstream (which many would consider unfair) to then take the nomination from the candidate as determined by the voters (unfairness on top of unfairness). Does any superdelegate doubt that this would cause a huge resentment and destroy the party?
At this point many superdelegates (especially those that are undeclared) probably just a nominee that is seen as legitimate by at least most supporters of the losing candidate. They seem to be faced with a dilemma then concerning Florida and Michigan. If Obama wins because the vote in those states is ignored, there will be many Clinton supporters who cry foul. Arguing that the rules are the rules and it wasn't his fault isn't going to make those that are upset feel any better. On the other hand, if Michigan and Florida are seated and because of that Clinton can get enough superdelegates to overturn the pledged delegate count it is certain Obama supporters will count foul for both changing the rules and stealing this from the voters. So what is to be done? The answer is simple. 150 of the undeclared superdelegates commit to Obama. This would be more than enough to pull him over the top even including Michigan and Florida. At that point they seat Michigan and Florida (if necessary including a provision binding the uncommitted delegate slate to vote for Obama on the first ballot, a concession Michigan would be happy to make to get their delegates seated). Obama is declared the presumptive nominee and then even more superdelegates switch to unite the party. This won't be seen as party elite stealing the election from Clinton because she will have lost the pledged delegate vote and the popular vote even counting Michigan and Florida. This is the only way the party can arrive at a nominee that will be near universally viewed as having legitimately won. I believe this will occur either between May 20 (when Obama declares pledged delegate victory) and May 31 when the Rules & Bylaw Committee meets, or else the RBC will delay their decision a week and this will happen shortly after June 3.