Hillary Clinton Currently Has A Commanding Delegate Lead

(This caricature of Hillary Clinton is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

Here is the current delegate count in the Democratic race (by Bloomberg Politics):

PRIMARY/CAUCUS DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton...............672
Bernie Sanders...............477

difference...............195

ALL DELEGATES

Hillary Clinton...............1130
Bernie Sanders...............499

difference...............631

I don't expect Sanders (or his supporters) to throw in the towel, but with each passing primary/caucus, his chances of getting the nomination become more difficult. Right now, Clinton has 47.4% of the delegates she would need for the nomination. Sanders has 20.9% of the delegates he would need. And Clinton's lead in delegates could grow substantially by the end of this week.

Today, Democratic voters in Michigan and Mississippi will decide who gets their delegates in a primary. Michigan has 130 delegates up for grabs, and Mississippi has 36. Then the next Tuesday, five more states will go to the polls -- Florida (choosing 212 delegates), Illinois (156 delegates), Missouri (71 delegates), North Carolina (107 delegates), and Ohio (143 delegates).

That's 855 delegates to be selected this week -- 166 on Tuesday, and 689 on the following Tuesday. And it is very likely that the bulk of those delegates will go to Hillary Clinton.

NOTE -- Those states will all have more delegates at the convention (Michigan-147, Mississippi-41, Florida-246, Illinois-182, Missouri-84, North Carolina-121, and Ohio-160) -- but I have only included in this post, the number that will be decided in this week's Democratic primaries.

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And for your edification, here are the Republican delegate totals:

Donald Trump...............384
Ted Cruz...............300
Marco Rubio...............151
John Kasich...............37

Wall Street Willie And The Delegate Math

If Wall Street Willie (aka Willard Mitt Romney) looks a bit unhappy and confused in the picture above, there's a good reason for it. So far, 23 states and 3 territories have held their primaries/caucuses and 835 delegates have been won by the four candidates. A few months ago, most political pundits had thought the race would be all over by now. It isn't, and it has become clear that although Romney has the delegate lead, his campaign has a serious weakness. As the returns from Kansas showed last Saturday, he still has not won over the social conservatives (the teabaggers and evangelicals).

Here are the delegate totals so far (according to RealClearPolitics):
Mitt Romney...............455  (54.49%)
Rick Santorum...............199  (23.83%)
Newt Gingrich...............117  (14.01%)
Ron Paul...............64  (7.66%)
TOTAL DELEGATES...............835

There are a couple of ways of looking at this. One, the idea being floated by the Romney campaign, is that none of his opponents can get enough delegates to win the nomination. That is probably true. There are 1451 delegates left to be decided. Santorum has the most delegates right now at 199. That means he would have to win 942 of the remaining delegates, or 64.92%. That's not likely, and the odds are even longer for Gingrich and Paul.

But there is another way to look at it. His three opponents together have 380 delegates (45.51%). The three of them together would just need 764 (52.65%) of the remaining delegates to throw the nomination into a brokered convention -- where anything could happen. That is within the realm of possibility. And the longer Romney goes without showing some real strength among base voters, the more encouraged the anti-Romney forces will get (and the harder they will work).

I think the odds are still in Wall Street Willie's favor to get just enough delegates to avoid a brokered convention. But his campaign has shown us that the Republican Party is a very divided party. And if Romney wins, there will be a lot of unhappy people in the party. Can he win them over after getting the nomination? He'd better. If very many of them are mad enough to stay home on election day or vote for a third party, it could be disastrous down-ballot for the Republican Party.

Florida And Michigan Get Their Delegates

The Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee met on Saturday to try and settle the problem of Michigan and Florida. They wound up re-instating both delegations in full, but limited each delegate to only half a vote -- including their superdelegates.

Personally, I had no problem with banning both delegations for breaking party rules. But, in the interest of party unity, this is a compromise that I can live with.

The states have been punished for violating party rules, but will still get to participate in the convention. In addition, the Democratic Party in both states are happy with the decision and willing to work hard for Democratic candidates this Fall.

I am also proud of the way Barack Obama and his campaign acted regarding this situation. They worked hard to find a compromise that would let Michigan and Florida participate in the nominating process. In the spirit of party unity, Obama gave up 24 delegates of his lead (19 in Florida and 5 in Michigan) to make the compromise work.

After the new delegate votes are figured in, Obama now has a total of 2,050 delegates. He is only 68 delegates short of the 2,118 needed for nomination. He should easily have more than enough delegates by the end of this week.

It's been a long and hard-fought nomination contest, but now it's time to turn our attention to the Republican opponent. America needs Obama in the White House and a bunch of new Democrats in Congress.

Clinton Interferes In Texas Delegate Process

It looks like the desperation is growing in the Clinton campaign. Is has become clear to her that she actually lost here in Texas, so she is now trying to delay the next step in the selection of Texas delegates.

On March 29th, the senate district and county conventions are scheduled to meet. At that time, they will select the delegates to the state convention. But the Clinton campaign has now sent a letter to state Democratic leaders asking that these conventions be delayed until some time in April.

Her campaign says the delay should happen so the signatures from the March 4th caucuses can be verified, to make sure only qualified delegates attend the senate district and county conventions. That's nonsense. The March 4th delegates were chosen in the same messy but democratic fashion in which they're always chosen.

Clinton wants to delay the conventions in the hope that she can win big in Pennsylvania, and maybe cause some disheartened Obama delegates to not show up in Texas. It won't happen, but it is all she is left with to try and even the score in Texas.

The March 29th conventions should not be, and won't be delayed. The March 4th caucuses were fair, and both sides had an equal chance to turn out their people. The Obama campaign just did a better job of doing it.

In the meantime, Obama just extended his lead in delegates by picking up at least seven of Edwards' delegates. John Edwards had earned 26 delegates before dropping out of the race -- 14 in Iowa, 4 in New Hampshire and 8 in South Carolina.

On Saturday, Iowa held its county conventions. During those conventions, at least seven of the Edwards delegates switched their support to Obama. The rest are still pledged to Edwards.

Thoughts After The New Hampshire Primary

Well, New Hampshire has voted and at least one thing is clear now -- we should ignore the polls in this primary season. The polls told us that Clinton would win Iowa and Obama scored a clear victory. The polls told us that Obama would easily win New Hampshire and Clinton came out the victor.

This election is just too fluid for the polls to be accurate. In New Hampshire, nearly 47% of voters said they made up their mind in the final week of the primary campaign there.

New Hampshire was probably the death knell for my candidate -- Bill Richardson. He was only able to corral 5% of the Democratic vote. I think he hoped for and needed at least 12%. I'll stick with him for a while because I don't like going back on my word, but the day is approaching when I'll have to make a decision between Edwards and Obama.

New Hampshire has to be considered a disappointment for Edwards. He finished a poor third with only 17%. He must do better soon or this will become a two-way race. That makes South Carolina very important. He doesn't have to win it, but he cannot again finish a poor third -- not that close to home. I hope he does well there, and again on February 5th. I'd like it to still be a three-way race when Texas gets to vote.

Right now, it looks like both Clinton and Obama have enough support to stay in the race for a while. If Edwards can stick around, it's within the realm of possibility that none of the three would have enough delegates to win at convention time. It probably won't happen, but for a political junkie like me it's an exciting prospect.

The same could happen with the Republicans. Huckabee, McCain and Romney have all won a small state. Guiliani is not out of it, and Paul could still be a spoiler. At this time, there's just no way to predict what will happen in that race.

Once again, the Democratic Party was the big winner of the night. Both Clinton and Obama had significantly larger vote totals than McCain (the Republican winner). Just like in Iowa, the majority of Independents chose to vote in the Democratic primary. Hopefully, this trend will continue and the Independents will choose to vote Democratic in large numbers next November.

But as exciting as Iowa and New Hampshire have been, less than one-half of one percent of the voters in this country have now made their choice known. There is still a long way to go.

According to CNN, 333 of the 4,049 Democratic delegates have now been chosen or pledged. Here's how it stands right now:

Clinton..........183

Obama..........78

Edwards..........52

Richardson..........19

Kucinich..........1

Should Michigan/Florida Be Stripped Of Delegates ?

The primary situation is starting to get crazy on the Democratic side. Many states have moved their primaries up to earlier and earlier dates to try and have a bigger voice in picking the parties nominee. A couple of states have even been bold enough to openly defy party rules and schedule very early primaries.

According to Democratic party rules, the Iowa caucuses will be on January 3rd, the New Hampshire primary will be on January 8th, the Nevada caucuses will be on January 19th, and the South Carolina primary will be on January 26th. No other state is allowed to have a caucus or primary before February 5th.

But some states have decided that rules are for other people. Florida set its primary for January 29th, and when they wouldn't reconsider their decision the National Democratic Party stripped Florida of all its delegates. Michigan recently set its primary on January 15th. Yesterday, the Democrats also stripped Michigan of all its delegates.

Both of these states are playing a high stakes game of "chicken" with the national party. They believe their delegations will be seated in spite of the party rules. They think the leading nominee will put pressure on the party to seat them. They might be right.

After all, we are talking about the fourth and the eighth largest states. It might be hard for the leading nominee to ignore states with that many votes. He/she might be afraid to anger the voters in those states by refusing to seat their delegations.

Seating these delegations might present fairness problems though. Why should they be seated after all the other states obeyed the rules? Wouldn't that be unfair to the states that followed party rules?

It would also be unfair to some of the candidates. Four major candidates (Edwards, Richardson, Obama, Biden) have removed their names from the Michigan ballot in an effort to convince the state to follow the rules. Would it now be fair to these candidates to seat the Michigan delegation?

This has really developed into a mess! Democrats really don't want to alienate voters in Florida and Michigan, but seating their delegations could set a really bad precedent. If these banned delegations are seated, why should any state bother to follow any party rules in the future?

The Republicans are having the same kind of problems, but I think they may have handled it a little better. Instead of stripping a state of all their delegates, they have stripped them of half their delegates. The state is still punished severely for violating the rules, and since they do have half their delegates seated, they have less chance of winning an appeal to the credentials committee.

I don't know what will happen. I hate to see a state completely banned from the convention, but the party must be able to enforce its rules. Maybe the Democrats should consider the solution the Republicans have chosen. It could be a workable compromise.