The narrow margin in delegates, and the growing likelihood that it will remain close, prompted concern on Wednesday from the chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, who said Tuesday night that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton should avoid taking the nominating fight all the way to the party convention in August.
"I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April," Mr. Dean said Wednesday on the NY1 cable news channel, "but if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement. Because I don’t think we can afford to have a brokered convention; that would not be good news for either party."
An adviser to Mr. Dean said Wednesday that he had not discussed the idea with either candidate.
"He was essentially laying down a marker that if need be, he is prepared to step in and try to help resolve the situation," the adviser said.[emphasis added]
There are several reasons why Dean would want the nomination decided before August. The tight contest so far has not, in my mind, really led to any negatives. But if we get in to a long slog to the convention, expect more sniping and bitterness than we've seen. So far there's been enough instant gratification and opportunities to follow the horse race that it hasn't gotten too nasty. But with little happening after the middle of March—by March 12th 84% of the pledged delegates will have already been contested—there won't be much campaigning to keep the candidates, their campaigns and especially their supporters occupied and out of trouble.
Furthermore, much of the Democratic campaign infrastructure for the fall is already being put in to place. But without knowing our candidate, we also won't know who will be staffing, funding and exercising authority over coordinated campaigns, who will leave campaigns to go off and do independent expenditure operations, what the 527's will do, etc. These operations will need to be in full gear by August, so either the nominee will need to be known by then, or people need to start immediately scrambling to devise and implement a feasible Plan B.
But here's the thing with that Dean comment: mathematically, there is no way the nomination will be settled before the convention, regardless of what happens from here on out.
There's still some haggling over who's garnered more pledged delegates, Clinton or Obama. Whatever the case, they're both at approximately 900 pledged delegates (so that's what we'll use in these hypotheticals). 56% of the pledged delegates have already been contested.
To reach 2,025--the magic number to lock up the nomination--from only pledged delegates, without having to count on a single unpledged delegate (superdelegate), one of them would have to win almost four out of five of the remaining delegates, who are about 44% of the total pledged delegates. That ain't gonna happen.
If one of the candidates wins 70% of the remaining pledged delegates--which is highly unlikely--they would have about 1,900 total pledged delegates. They would need an additional 125 votes from unpledged delegates, or 16% of the unpledged delegates. That would not be difficult for either to muster.
If one of the candidates wins 65% of the remaining pledged delegates, they would have about 1,830 total pledged delegates. They would need an additional 200 votes from unpledged delegates, or 25% of the unpledged delegates.
If one of the candidates wins 60% of the remaining pledged delegates (which isn't likely but isn't completely implausible), they would have about 1,760 total pledged delegates. They would need an additional 250 votes from unpledged delegates, or 31% of the unpledged delegates.
If one of the candidates wins 55% of the remaining pledged delegates--and this isn't hard to imagine--they would go in to the convention with 1,689 pledged delegates, leaving them 335 delegates short of a majority. That's equal to 42% of the total number of unpledged delegates.
Of course what could change all these calculations is the admission of Michigan and Florida delegates in to the mix. The DNC's position has been that because those two states broke DNC rules and jumped ahead of the Super Tuesday states, their punishment is a 100% reduction in their delegates. The Clinton campaign, you've probably heard, has been touting the idea of seating those delegates, which if pursued would make Howard Dean's life a living hell, and could create acrimony within the party akin to the national acrimony over the Florida recount and Bush v Gore. Dean obviously wants to avoid that.
One possibility that avoids the fight within the credentials committee over whether to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates would be for those states to hold DNC-sanctioned contests, probably in June after the scheduled contests, and probably conducted as party-run (as opposed to state-conducted) closed primaries. That might be a fall-back plan should he not succeed in cutting a deal in March or April (which seems improbable at this point).
If nobody can cut a deal, and Michigan and Florida don't conduct new contests, the math is clear: if the contest goes until the last primaries in June, and neither candidate suffers a massive collapse, we won't know our nominee until the Democratic convention in Denver at the end of August.