Obama now have 1965 delegates (including 307 superdelegats), while Hillary have 1779 delegates (including 279 superd.)
Obama is a head with 186 delegates
There are 212 superdelegats that haven’t decided yet, and only 86 pledged delegates left (Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota).
Hypothetical: If she won all the pledged delegates left she would still only have 1865 delegates - 100 behind Obama. She then have to get the support of a large majority of the superdelegats. If she got support of (lets say) 75% of the supers she will have 2024 total and more delegates than Obamas 2018, but still not reach the magic number which is 2026. She need 76% of the remaining superdel. to win.
All know that this scenario will not happen. The most optimistic scenario for her is that she would win 75% of the remaining pledged delegates. She will then have a total of 1844 delegates, against Obamas 1986. She then need the support of 86% of the superdelegates to win (2026).
How could this possible happen ?
I remember that Hillary, about a month ago, used the argument that she had more superdelegates than Obama, but thats not the case any longer since Obama took the lead in superd. about two weeks ago.
More than me my ask: How many times does Obama have to win before he becomes the president candidate for the Democratic party ???
The super delegates are only pledged. They can change who they support. She could convince them to switch. Obama could do or say something so damaging that they change their support.
She needs to finish as close as possible in pledged delegates (getting FL and MI into it would help) and make the case that the pledged ones are essentially tied overall, leaving it to the superdelegates.
She then needs to convince the supers to switch back to her as the stronger candidate. Frankly, I don’t see a very strong case for that unless something drastic happens to Obama. Even if behind closed doors she can present convincing evidence that there are enough people who simply won’t vote for a black candidate (or her own supporters, much to her dismay of course, might fail to support him for other reasons)… even if she can do that, there are offsetting factors that weaken the argument.
First, there are certainly Republicans who will vote for Obama, while a great many will never vote for her under any circumstances. Second, he’s brought millions of new and young voters into the process, and that could be hugely beneficial to the party not only this year but well beyond. There’s no reason to believe they’ll vote for her in November in the same numbers, even if Obama campaigns hard.
As I see it, for any arguments she has there are counter-arguments to offset them, and IMO more compelling ones.
Hillary and camp are now claiming 2209 delegates are needed for a majority. That number includes Michigan and Florida, which Hillary has always believed should be counted and always has, like when she said “We have a plan to get 2209 delegates” back in February.
Oh, wait, back then she said “…we have a plan to get 2025 delegates” that were necessary, but that’s an honest mistake and just coincidentally the number she now rejects.
I think that a large proportion of the afro-American members and voters will leave the democratic party if she ends up being the democratic president candidate. The result will be that the democrats will not see someone of their own party in the white house for …perhaps decades
As a Republican, I have no horse in this race as I believe that McCain will beat either one. That being said:
Out of 3000 state delegates, Obama has a lead of 175, a swing of less than 3%.
The Democrats require a candidate to get 15% of the vote to be considered in a caucus or receive delegates in a primary. If it were straight-up proportional for all candidates, then neither would have a majority of the deligates and HRC might actually be ahead depending on the breakdown of second-choice voting.
The primaries give different results than cacuses and if all of the states used primaries, HRC could very well be ahead.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but IIRC, some states are winner take all and some are proportional (above 15%). I know HRC tends to win Electoral College states so would using a consistant standard, either proportional or winner-take-all, in all of the states still have Obama ahead?
Michigan and Florida do not count. Not to start up yet another thread about it, but that is a significant number of delegates. Not that it would put HRC ahead, but what if she were within 50 or 100 pledged delegates at the convention. Could a rationale be made for her to take the nomination that can’t be made at 175 difference?
Didn’t superdelegates come into existance precisly to overrule the will of the voters if the major Democrats thought the voters had made an error in who they picked? If so and assuming HRC is more electable in the general election (let’s say because she has larger support than Obama in high electoral college states), then isn’t it the superdelegate duty to put HRC over the top? If not, then why have them?
Not that you’re making this argument, but it does come up so I have to say anyway that it’s a silly one. Leaving aside any personal attributes of the two candidates, it’s become clear that Obama’s team quite simply beat Clinton’s. They’ve been smarter and more effective, and part of that effort included sizing up how the contest was being run (primaries & caucuses) and planning accordingly.
Who’s to say what would have happened if all states had held primaries? Obama’s campaign would have planned differently, and perhaps done just as well or better. Or not. We’ll never know – and it doesn’t matter in the least.
Only on the GOP side. On the DEM side, ALL primaries are proportional and there are no winner take all states.
I also vote for the “Wait and Hope Something Comes Out About Obama” strategy. Let’s be honest. His lead is pretty thin. If you want to compare it to recent convention leads, it is almost a dead heat. I wouldn’t quit either if I were Clinton.
We have more than three months until the convention. Everyone knows everything about HRC. She’s been in the public eye for years now. Everyone knows all of her secrets. Obama could still have a few things hidden (remember the Bush DUI arrest that was revealed days before the 2000 election?) and in an election this tight, something not so major could be enough to make the party faithful nervous enough to switch back to HRC…
Wouldn’t the Democratic Party be better off without all those racists? Voting for someone purely because of the colour of his or her skin is simply racist, be it black or white.
No, you need to understand the American Black vote, it’s not racist anymore than women voting for Clinton are sexist. If you want to argue purist definitions than we can do that, but the reason the “black” vote is so high is not racism, and they cannot all be lumped into the racist bracket.
If this were a couple months ago you might be right, but it isn’t, there are only 2 states and Puerto Rico left. Clinton cannot win this without a tidal shiftof superdelegates, and to date that tidal shift has gone to Barack Obama. When you see Superdelegates massing around a candidate like they are Obama, it’s time for the “other” candidate to get out. Clinton has no chance to be the democratic nominee this season, it is over.
For me, it’s not so much that she should give up because she’s behind, it’s that she should go away because she’s worn out her welcome. I don’t mind someone continuing to campaign, even though her chance of winning is slim and getting slimmer, as long as your focus is on getting your message out. She’s not doing that. Her campaign has been divisive, and she’s trying to get more delegates, not by presenting herself as a better candidate, but by pulling favors, reversing her stance on MI/FL, and trying to make Obama look unfit for the job.
They won’t leave because they want to vote for a black president. They will leave because what it will look like is that a black man won fairly, by the rules, that he had the majority of states, the majority of pledged delegates, had the popular vote, and lost because the party big wigs got together in a smoke filled room and decided they didn’t want a black man. It would be an enormous “fuck you”, a message that the Democratic party is happy to pander to the black vote but has no interest in actually inviting them to the table.
I don’t think that’s the concern. I think the concern is that if Clinton gains the nomination over a black candidate who leads in the popular vote, the number of states won, and the number of delegates elected, and she does it by manipulating the rules, pulling in favours, and playing the race card (“I’m the only one who can pull in lower-class white voters, they won’t vote for Mr. Obama for some reason” {wink, wink}), black voters may feel that the party has screwed one of the most articulate and promising black candidates for the Presidency they’ve ever had.
That in turn may make them re-evaluate whether the Democratic Party warrants their support - is it truly an equal opportunity party, or is it really a white-elite party that caters to the black vote?
At least, that’s how I’ve understood the argument when I’ve heard talking heads debating it on the tube. I’m open to correction.
