Posted on 02/07/2008 7:23:22 AM PST by jdm
The delegate assignments have mostly shaken out from the Super Tuesday contests, and the situation looks even more grim than yesterday for the Democrats. Barack Obama now has a narrow five-delegate lead among non-superdelegates, 635-630, at roughly the halfway point. The remaining state delegates will now have to break markedly in favor of one candidate over the other in order to avoid making the superdelegates select the party nominee:
The race for the Democratic presidential nomination between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama of Illinois is becoming a pitched delegate-by-delegate battle, which is likely to drag out for months and may even be unresolved heading into the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.
"It is likely that no side will gain an appreciable or significant advantage in overall delegate counts between now and March 4, past March 4, even past April because of the way our party allocates its delegates," Mrs. Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, told reporters yesterday. "For all of those who for cycle after cycle wished for a battle that goes to the convention, in terms of neither side definitively wrapping this up, you could be looking at such a contest here."
Wolfson's open discussion of this topic reflects the dawning reality of the race. For months, the media speculated that the Republicans might have to deal with a brokered convention, but their primaries are designed to avoid it. John McCain has likely taken a commanding lead in the race, and unless Mitt Romney can start churning out 3-1 wins in the remaining proportional states, he won't have much hope in a convention fight, let alone an outright win.
Democrats have 4,049 delegate that will attend the convention, but 796 of these are superdelegates. That leaves 3,253 elected delegates, of which 1,291 have already been assigned to one of the candidates. That leaves 1,961 delegates left, and the winner has to have 2,025 to gain the nomination. Both Hillary and Obama would need almost 1,400 of them to win -- or 69%.
One of them would have to start winning all the proportionally-allocated states by more than a 2-1 margin the rest of the way through the calendar, at least if they wanted to win without the superdelegates. That looks like a complete impossibility. The Democrats will have to either broker a deal between Hillary and Obama to avoid a floor fight, or they will have to have the party establishment pick the winner. And the closer the two candidates are at the end of the process, the more divisive that outcome will be.
More popcorn, please.
Thanks for a ray of hope!
Will this year be a contest to determine which major party can self-destruct first? Time will tell.
If McCain somehow manages to get a majority of the delegates, the odds of his dying before the convention are 30 times that of someone else his same age who was not held as a POW by primitive savages for 7 years.
Which means, when you are 71, your chance of dying is pretty good, and for ex-POWs, their chance of dying any time soon is incredibly great.
The Dems will go into a convention with the Great Black Hope and the Hildabeast ~ they've gotta' come outta' there with someone who can attract Republican voters.
The Republicans will go into a convention with a dead delegate leader and a couple of guys whose "religiously affiliated" followers would rather duke it out than cooperate in a campaign.
Could be a lot of fun.
It'll be the GOP. Clinton and Obama will run together and much excitement will ensue. We've torn each other to shreds. What can McCain possibly do at this point? They are split in two. We are split in 3...4...5?
Thanks for posting. BTTT.
Uh... I think we need a Plan B, just in case McCain lives. ;-)
LOL!
So, will Hillary announce O'bama as VP choice next week?
That might take some air out of his sails.
And thus we see the end of the Democrat side of the current nomination charade. On the Democrat side, it looks like it will end up being decided by ... party hacks.
The decidedly odd course of the Republican primaries has shown the weakness on our side.... And now we're all hoping that the nomination will be decided by party hacks.
The people may choose Obama, but the superdelegates could give Hil the nomination anyway.
Isn’t that democracy!
Not good for Obama. The KKKlintons had more than 8 years to become familiar with and control the party machinery. Obama is a newcomer and not as well plugged into the DNC Crime family. Obama’s position is like that of the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas. Just when he thinks he’s in, he’s OUT.
But someone (talk show host, conservative writer) has noted, that given this scenario, if this is not settled amicably things could get ugly. Their prediction was Minnesota would be a repeat of 68' for the Dem's. If the Obama camp is not satisfied, and the super delegates throw it to Hilda, all heck could break loose. We feel disenfranchised with McCain? How many Obama supporters stay home if he doesn't get the big prize or even VP.
This is all very entertaining. You have Hillary having her end game strategy being telling Obama to sit in the back of the bus and that his turn to sit in the front will come later, maybe. You have most all the black people at the convention hating Hillary as much as we do here at FR. You have the super delegates trying to see whether allegiance to Hillary or getting a piece of Obama’s youth appeal is more important and the outrage over these delegates negating either the votes of Obama’s supporters or Hillary’s. You have Hillary wanting to have her MI and FL delegates and the Obama supporters threatening to walk out of the convention if those FL and MI delegates are allowed. This is an awesome reality TV show.
Even if elected it's exceedingly probable McCain wouldn't get as far as Benjamin Harrison ~
This will be their personal Florida 2000’ all over again without the hanging chads... Ouch....
The real question is how big of win by Obama in elected delegates could Hillary overcome with superdelegates. I don't think that all approximately 800 superdelegates would vote for her to give her a 1 vote win if she was 800 behind going into the convention. Could she count on a 600-200 split to overcome a 400 delegate margin in elected ones? Only 500-300?
Add on top of that the phantom wins in Florida and Michigan which now have zero delegates because of their early primaries. Will Hillary supporters demand to seat all 367 of their delegates, even though the other candidates followed party rules and didn't contest their primaries?
The point of this article is that both Obama and Hillary will likely have a valid claim on the top of the ticket and the person who is demoted to VP is going to be enraged.
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