On a forum with some friends, I give periodic rundowns on the state of the race to explain ... well, up until a week ago... why the media has been operating under a mass delusion that Clinton still had a reasonable chance to win.
Hit a new point today ... even with Michigan and Florida counting in full, Obama still wins the nomination by the end of the primary season.
Behold...
Let's redo the math with some possible MI/FL scenarios. Right now, Obama has
1892
delegates according to DemConWatch. This includes only one of the 19 Edwards delegates. Let me take a conservative SWAG and say he gets a total of 16 of them.
1907
Now, since May 6 (NC/IN primaries) the Superdelegate spouts have really opened up. Over that period, Obama's picked up an average of over 4 supers per day. Let's say that holds up at 4 per -- this is conservative. As he gets closer, the pace should accelerate.
This weekend, some Add-On Delegates will be allocated: Colorado, Kansas, and Nevada will probably all go to Obama, and California has announced they'll give him two of their five. Let's say one of the 5 likely goes to an uncommitted candidate or possibly Clinton (NV).
1911
On May 20, five days from now
1931
we have the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. Kind of -- Oregon is by mail and has mostly already voted, but that's when it ends and they release the tallies. Current polling suggests Obama will win Oregon by about 14 and Clinton will win Kentucky by a lot -- 30's probably a reasonable guess. That would split Oregon about 30-22 and Kentucky about 18-33.
1979
There's an interesting juncture here -- he'll have clinched the pledged delegate lead under the rules as they stand now, but depending on how MI/FL are resolved, he could then fall back just slightly underneath the threshhold. There's a small but influential group of supers called the "Pelosi Club" who have committed to voting for the PD leader. Let's just say they hold off.
The next thing that happens is the Rules & Bylaws Committee meet 11 days later
2023
on May 31 to deal with Michigan and Florida. There are broadly three things that can happen:
A. They decide to just seat them under their votes as they stand. You have to think under this scenario, Obama gets all the uncommitted delegates from Michigan (remember, he wasn't on the ballot there, but Clinton was).
B. They exact some sort of partial penalty on the states. There are a million different scenarios, but the simplest is that they just declare that all the delegates from those states get half-votes like the Democrats Abroad do. Since that's numerically similar to the other proposals, we'll just take that as the second scenario.
C. They either enforce the standing punishment, or punt the whole thing down to the credentials committee (same thing, the CC handles the appeal) which probably wouldn't meet until late June at the earliest. Since the Clinton Camp swears that they won't let it go that far, then we can just say they're off the table. So, I'll present Obama's delegates with MI/FL in full (getting all the uncommitted from MI and Edwards' FL share), in half, and with nothing:
2166 2094.5 2023
And the number to win is then 2210 2117.5 2025. The next day
2170 2098.5 2027
is the Puerto Rico primary. There's not much polling there, the only one on record was Clinton +13. That gives a split of 24-31 for
2194 2122.5 2051
Two days after Puerto Rico,
2202 2130.5 2059
We finish the season in South Dakota and Montana. There's again almost no polling, but Obama is favored in both races. Give him 8-7 and 9-7 wins for
2217 2147.5 2076
All winning totals.