Redstate

They are at the bottom of the spreadsheet. I cannot imagine they will be included unless there is a revote in June. It's doubtful that Hillary would do as well with Obama actually on the ballot AND campaigning.

...to be seated? Believe me, they will be seated in the end.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

this is going to be ugly before it's all over.
Couldn't happened to a nicer group.

I'm thinking that, if these delegates end up making a difference in the outcome, this almost certainly ends up in court.

Frankly, I think the more likely scenario is that they won't make a difference in the outcome -- that, as Obama starts looking more and more like the frontrunner (in terms of delegates and otherwise), the superdelegates make it a [i]fait accompli[/i] enough so that the MI and FL delegates don't even matter.

The superdelegates hold that power. And I think people are just assuming that these people will put Hillary over the top. I don't buy that assumption for a minute.

There's no question that the Clintons have more influence than Obama does on party apparatuses. But I think the #1 motivation here is going to be ensuring victory -- all else, including loyalty to the Clintons, will take a back seat to that.

But, still, assuming MI and FL do end up mattering, I'm sure that'll go to the courts....and Lord knows how that would turn out. My guess is that the DNC's ruling -- that the delegates don't count -- would be allowed to stand. This is their show, after all.

wrote a great hypothetical opinion in yesterday's WSJ, discussing HRC going to task to have MI & FL delegates accounted
for, and the presuming court case that would come out of it. It will have libs going at odds over what they believed in deciding Bush v. Gore.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120269002843257513.html?mod=opinion_main...

Before you get to heaven, you must go through hell, which in my case is the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

bite on the backside!

But not before HRC and her minions sue the pants off the DNC and pursue a scorched earth legal battle. Either way it ends up, the DNC is in big trouble with this thing.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

If they do seat those delegates, they are opening up Pandora's Box in terms of how early any state can move up its primary. With this precident set, how many states will continue to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first? To my mind, it's a wonderful site to see such harmony amongst our opponents. ;)

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to fit facts. Sherlock Holmes

She will pull that card out at the convention if she needs to. Even though she will get trounced in the voting today, the proportional delegate allottment means that Obama still won't rack up any kind of significant delegate lead.

Ruffini's numbers seem plausible to me. That means neither HRC or Obama will be anywhere close to the needed delegates to clinch without superdelegate support. This is going to make for great television.

BTW, has anybody else noticed that MSNBC has devolved into basically an Obama PR outlet?

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

...it'll go to court. There's no way around it.

If HRC is within striking distance and these delegates could make a difference in the outcome, she'll sue to have them counted or to prevent a revote if the Democrats end up seeking that avenue.

I'm sure Obama would also sue if they just try to count them.

That said, I really think the most likely outcome here is that the Obama will end the primaries with a decent lead in pledged delegates and the superdelegates will break to him in order to heed the wishes of primary voters.

This dream people keep having of a huge Battle Royale in the Democratic ranks isn't going to happen, IMO. Obama may not make the magic number from normal delegates. But I don't think Democratic superdelegates are going to choose loyalty to the Clintons over the health of their party and their chances in November.

They just want to win -- naturally. And, while I'm sure they all have their opinions of who gives them the best chance of winning, I also imagine they realize that just about the only thing that could ensure defeat is a fullscale civil war (particularly one along racial lines).

As much as we might dream of that happening, it probably isn't going to. People make too much out of Hillary Clinton's resolute ambition and willingness to do anything at all to realize it.

I'd much rather we focus on the pathetic condition of our own party.

At the absolute most, seating FL and MI would be a net +123 for Hillary. This counts Hillary's delegates in MI and FL, subtracts Obama's delegates in FL and ignores the 55 "uncommitted" delegates in MI that were the result of folks coming out to vote against Hillary despite the fact that she was the only major candidate on the ballot. One could make the argument (as I would) that these uncommitted MI delegates would swing heavily for Obama, but let's say that they split 50/50 just to paint a "worst-case scenario" for Obama.

Obama is already up by about 60 pledged delegates. He'll likely be up by at least 90 by the time today is over. Next are HI and WI, which will push him up to at least a 100 delegate majority. Unless Hillary does an amazing Job in OH and TX (not likely after the month she's having), Obama shouldn't have much trouble racking up another 23 net delegates through the rest of the primary season.

Once Obama has a 124 pledged delegate lead, FL and MI can be seated without consequence. Superdelegates will fall in line behind the pledged-delegate majority winner, no matter to whom they are "committed" at present.

I tend to agree with all you wrote here.

I think people are putting a tad bit too much stock in the "Hillary will do *anything*" line. I agree that she's very ambitious about the presidency. And she probably realizes that she has one and only one shot to do it -- and this is it.

And, while I have a hard time seeing her step out of the way gracefully, I think her ability to swing things her way is going to be extremely limited by the rest of the party's desire to simply win the damn election.

She may try -- but I think she won't be successful. It's a sad commentary on the current state of my party that our best hopes seem to be pinned to some kind of civil war in the other party.

First, I don't think Obama will gain another 23 delegates relative to Hillary after Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If anything, Hillary will eat into Obama's delegate total. Also, don't forget Puerto Rico, with 55 delegates, and it's winner-take-all.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

That 23 delegate gap was worst-case scenario. CNN is the only outlet that shows Obama's current pledged delegate lead as small as it is. I went with it simply to present an absolute worst case scenario for Obama. CBS currently has him up by almost 100 pledged delegates, which means he only needs 24 more as of now to make FL and MI irrelevant. He could conceivably do that as early as next week in HI and WI.

Also, Puerto Rico is proportional, not winner take all, and not until June 7, well after all of this will be over.

...partially because no two groups are using the same ones - this primary is a power gamer's dream, by the way - and partially because you wouldn't like the source I'm personally using anyway*, the Puerto Rico situation's a bit more complex than that:

But one group of 63 delegates is more equal than another. Democratic delegates are supposed to be allocated by proportional representation. But that notion is alien to highly competitive Puerto Rican politics. In practice, the dominant figure in Puerto Rico identifying with the Democratic Party has seen to it that his faction gets all the territory’s delegates. This was true of Govs. Carlos Romero Barcelo and Pedro Rosello of the New Progressive Party (PNP) as well as Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). PPD politicians almost always identify with mainland Democrats (an exception was Sila Calderón, governor from 2000 to 2004, who identified with neither party and concentrated, successfully, on persuading Congress and the Bush administration to close the artillery range on Vieques Island). It’s not clear to me at this distance whether the current governor, Aníbal Acevedo of the PPD, will have similar clout. He’s at odds with Rosello, and the legislature is in the hands of the PNP. But if Acevedo doesn’t determine who gets Puerto Rico’s 63 votes, someone else will. And they aren’t likely to be proportionately distributed.

Don't get me wrong: your guy's having a great night, CC. But he missed his best chance for an early win when he lost CA, MA, NJ, & NY.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

*I use the Green Papers mostly because I couldn't detect a bias in them once during the 2004 election season, and because the people who run it are obsessive in ways I can't match.

Is there another guaranteed 3 I'm missing? Hmmm...

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Apologizes for our not having congressmen or senators by giving us a few extra delegates.

Whatever. I figure if 8,000 people vote in the GOP primary, then that's one delegate for every 500 people. So my vote is worth .002 delegates.

"Livin' the dream. I'm going to Disney World." Super Bowl XLII MVP, Elisha Nelson Manning

DC is just given 16, period. It does not get those delegates through the formula that is used for the states. It is lumpoed in with the territories (as entities that do not have elected members of Congress). I don't know why the RNC decided that 16 was the right number, but that's what it decided.

So it gets 16 plus the 3 leaders (like every other jurisdiction) for a total of 19.

Total delegates are 4,048 (formerly 4,414); a candidate needs either 2,025 or 2,208 (50% + 1) to win. The official tallies are all assuming the first number, which does not include FL & MI to start off with. That means that you have to recalculate the whole threshold all over again.

As to the scenarios, please note that the super-delegate system was set up to prevent people like Barack Obama from getting the nomination in the first place. :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

The important number is becoming pledged delegates, not total. People who focus on 2025 are missing the REAL horse race. The supers WILL not overturn the pledged vote, if there is a decisive winner. If there is no decisive winner, then the fun begins ;).

The superdelegates were created to do precisely that: overturn the pledged delegates in the case of a McGovern. There's no reason to have unpledged PLEOs otherwise. Your confidence that they won't is amusing.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

There's a very narrow, but plausible, band in which things are really bad (or, if you're the vast majority of Redstate readers, very good), and more scenarios in which things end uneasily but clearly.

Ruffini's numbers leave you on the high end of scenario 2, and only 37 Obama delegates away from scenario 1. Scenario 3 is, by his numbers, harder to get to and would require Obama really tanking. Ruffini is a pretty smart observer of such things. I'd be curious to see how it would go if superdelegates tended to go the way of their states.

As somebody who knows a fair amount about the Democratic party process, I think that LibertarianHawk is correct in saying that the superdelegates will move to confirm a winner rather than actually seizing the process away. I know that claim will get laughed down, but the idea that Democratic elected officials are so utterly devoted to the Clintons that they'll split the baby just isn't correct. By and large these are elected officials who are cannier about protecting themselves than they are concerned about crowning Our Cruel Empress.

Allow me to Kowalski myself and say that I knew Moe would strenuously disagree with me on my last point.

It actually has little to do with Hillary Clinton, and quite a lot to do with Barack Obama. They rather badly want a win, and there's one obvious reason why he won't give it to them.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Seriously. You seem very, very convinced that Obama will be prevented, by means fair or foul, from becoming the nominee, because the powers that be that run my party know, deep down, that Obama is not electable. Here - as elsewhere - you say there's "one obvious reason." It's not obvious to me - can you name it, so it's easier for us to actually talk about, and I can understand this theory you're very convinced about?

We don't elect peaceniks in this country to be President.

Well, not Democrats, at least. A Republican can get away with not being a "veins in your teeth" sort of fellow, because it's naturally assumed that when the balloon goes up he'll be there, ten feet tall and farting fire. Which is why Eisenhower and Nixon could run on ending their respective wars, and Bush II could get away with a no nation-building platform for his first term (you'll notice that he was proved wrong on that and still beat out that poor dumb peacenik the Dems ran in '04).

BTW: I dunno how we're going to, you know, "argue" on this, seeing as the only way that you can prove me wrong is for the Democrats to actually elect a peacenik... :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

All I wanted to know was what the "one obvious reason" was. This helps me understand the rest of your analysis a little better.

I had actually set it for a drive-by: oh, well. :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Total pledged delegates excluding FL and MI=3253.
FL and MI pledged delegates=366
Total pledged delegates including FL and MI=3619

So the bar for a majority of pledged delegates sits at either 1627 (ignoring FL and MI) or 1810 (including FL and MI).

You are right to focus on pledged delegates, though, since superdelegates are going to vote for whoever leads in pledged delegates.

Thanks, the numbers need to be adjusted. Still, the horse race is delegates, Obama will stop short of the goal line, and MI/FL will be a HUGE issue....

of your desire to support the troops, I, personally, put little stock in Mark Halperin, (he of liberal MSM bona fides who directed the Note to be more favorable to John Kerry just to make it fair), and his analysis about or advice to the Republican party in general, or conservatives in particular.

"All that need be done for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

and the kind of margins he's been posting up, and will post up today, this race currently and very decisively leans Obama. I'll be surprised if Hillary wins anything else to be frank. It's a long time till March 4th. I think this is race is close to being over.

"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR

But that being said, I think it's still a gamble.

I just hope that Pipken doesn't screw this thing up. A 1-on-1 race between Gilchrest and Harris would be a slam dunk for Harris wouldn't it?

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

Obama's base: White, education, wealthy, uppity liberals, younger voters, blacks, & left-wing activists/moveon.org crowd.

Hillary's base: lower/middle-class voters, under-educated voters, blue collar workers, women, Hispanics, Asians, seasoned citizens, & feminists.

Demographically, Virginia plays right into Obama's hands. There are lots of black voters there, and a huge amount of latte-liberals in NOVA.

Hillary doesn't have friendly territory until she gets to Texas (with Hispanics), and the rust belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

thus they have to vote for Obama or they won't be able to sleep at night. That said, many also secretly think he is the second coming of JFK and that too is a large part of their decision making process.

Wait until they figure out he's really the second coming of Jimmy Carter!

Sad, but funny. Gave me a laugh. Thanks

The all dancing crap of the world.