I have one commenter on this site who seems convinced that Clinton still has a chance to win the Democratic nomination. He even saw her crushing defeat Tuesday night as giving her momentum. I believe his exact words were, "Um, she won Indiana! Newsflash! On to West Virginia!What is the latest a nominee has ever lost a primary election?"
I seriously doubt I can change his mind, and he has the right to his opinion, no matter how wrong I may think he is. But he did get me to thinking -- exactly what chance does she have? So I decided to do a little delegate math.
I have decided to use the numbers provided by CNN. The numbers are really close on other sites, but I had to pick one and CNN has done a pretty good job of keeping up with the delegate selections and superdelegate preferences.
Let's start by looking at pledged delegates. Currently, Obama has 1588 pledged delegates and Clinton has 1419 pledged delegates. This gives Obama a lead of 169 pledged delegates.
The pledged delegates remaining out are as follows: West Virginia (28), Kentucky (51), Oregon (52), Montana (18), South Dakota (15) and Puerto Rico (55). That's a total of 219 pledged delegates that are yet to be chosen. To pull even with Obama, Clinton needs 169 plus half of the rest -- that's 194 or 88.6% of the outstanding delegates.
That just isn't happening under any scenario. So lets throw in the superdelegates who have made their preference known (since Clinton still has a small lead in superdelegates). Obama has 257 superdelegates, which gives him 1845 total delegates. Clinton has 267 superdelegates, giving her 1686 total delegates.
That gives Obama a lead of 159 total delegates. To pull even with Obama in total delegates, Clinton would need to win 189 of the unpicked pledged delegates, or 86.3%. Once again, I don't think anyone believes that can happen. It's going to take a lot of superdelegates for Clinton to win.
So what does Obama need to win? Obama has 1845 delegates and needs 2025 to win. That means he just needs 180 more delegates to put him over the top. Let's say he can win 50% of the outstanding delegates, or 109 delegates. That puts him at 1954 delegates, and he would only need 71 of the 271 remaining superdelegates. That's easily within his reach.
But lets say he does really poorly from here on out and only gets 40% of the remaining delegates, or 87 delegates. That would give him 1932 delegates, and he would only need 93 of the 271 superdelegates (34.3%).
The math tells us that Obama is just too close to the finish line for Clinton to have a chance -- even if she does really well in the remaining few contests. I know this won't change the mind of my die-hard Clinton supporter, but it should ease the minds of a lot of Obama supporters.
As I said yesterday, this race is over. The Democratic Party is going to nominate a black man for president. I am very proud of the party. As an older guy, I was afraid I wouldn't live to see that happen.
I think the latest rallying cry of the diehard Hillary supporters, or the Taylor Marsh Brigades as I've come to think of them, is that 2,025 isn't the threshold for victory because it doesn't include Florida and Michigan. The problem with that is that, even if the full delegations were seated without any compromises, it would only put a dent in Obama's lead. It would improve the math a bit, but she would still have a hard time being able to get the pledged delegates she needs even under the best of circumstances. And if she can't get the pledged delegate lead, the supes aren't going to jump off the cliff after Hillary. Obama has already proven that he can weather whatever the Repubs throw at him, and it's starting to sound like they'll be reluctant to get too dirty lest it backfire on them.
ReplyDeleteI'm really proud that we're going to have Obama as our nominee - not just because of the historical significance of nominating an African-American, but because I really think he's going to be a great president. I think he'll pick a woman (though probably not Hillary) to be his running mate in an attempt to unify the party. Imagine that - an African-American president and a woman as VP. It would be a great statement about how far we've come as a people.
BT-
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said.
I think you want a Obama as a candidate just because you want an african-american as a candidate. Don't count on the entire Democratic party rallying behind him. There are many reasons to doubt his candidacy (just as I'm sure you would say the same about Hillary). I have heard just as many Hillary supporters say they wouldn't support Obama as Obama supporters say they won't support Hillary. Maybe it's not our party's year after all. I'm a delegate to the convention in Austin as a Hillary delegate and that's how I will go, no matter what. I'm behind Hillary taking it all the way to Denver if she has to. Besides, Hillary has won the most recent contest.
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