Here’s where the Democratic presidential race stands now: unless one of the two remaining contenders (sorry, Mike Gravel, you have no delegates so you aren’t contending) dies or withdraws, neither of them will have enough pledged delegates to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination outright.
So what should happen next? Share your ideas and win us over with the sparkling clarity of your beautiful mind.
If you’re feeling brave, try answering the two follow-up questions:
Which of the two candidates is likely to benefit more from your solution?
and
Which of the two candidates would you prefer to see as the Democratic Party nominee?
I’ll answer all three questions myself in a little while, but I’d like to read your thoughts first.
Where do you get your math? You’re saying Edwards will hold the key votes?
If you want some clues about the probably Carl Rove playbook, here what domain names the RNC has been snapping up this week:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/rnc-snaps-up-domain-names/
Anything goes cage match. A bitter fight to the death. Clinton will use sticks and stones because she wont shut up about the words thing and Obama will do a ‘flying hope-a-fier’ from the top of the cage and put her out of her misery.
What’s going on right now makes a great premise for a novel. Think of the sneaky underhanded intrigue of sleazy politics in high stakes DC. NOW, when the economy’s melting down, real worthlessness is spreading like a cancer across America and the financial sector is hemorrhaging money. i’ll be back when i finish it . . .
The Dems will now start doing McCain’s and Rove’s jobs for them.
Kerry (gotta hold on to that extra ten million) and Gore (recount? um, what should I do now?) would have politely bowed out by now.
Has anyone figured out how much each vote has cost the candidates yet?
Well, y’all are talking about what will happen.
What ought to happen?
I haven’t seen any recent polling on either one v. McCain or on a “dream team” v. McCain. If opinion is shifting within the party it must be shifting nationally as well.
The junior senator from Illinois is extremely talented and the country needs him. Quite frankly I see him as a vision guy rather than a leader-of-the-bureaucracy guy counting all the vote totals to get the legislative agenda through. He would be an ideal secretary of state or a Kissinger type on special missions–except for the “serving at the pleasure of the president” bit. He needs to be elected in his own right. It has been said that the vice presidency is not worth a warm bucket of spit, but I believe it would be a fast track to the experience he needs to be groomed for president. If he is elected now he will be one more mediocre man in office, oh, right, the first black one, or half-black, or token black, whoopie-fizz, if everyone doesn’t suddenly get ‘uncomfortable’ in the voting booth and vote for McCain who is more than qualified, but if Obama is elected after being VP, he will be one of history’s truly great presidents.
Obama hasn’t paid his dues.
He also needs to drop that “everybody’s picking on me” routine and take back his middle name. No matter how many churches he goes to, his father was Moslem and in the Arab world that means he’s Moslem. I’m sorry guys, but in that world you inherit your religion from your father, just like orthodox Jews inherit religion from their mothers. The challenge of the coming generations will be with the Arab culture, not with Russia. Obama’s name and background will give us an incredible legitimacy in the Moslem world.
It would be nice if the Dems could present a united front with one candidate and Dean could smoke a few cigars in the back room and come out with all the ducks in a row. But it doesn’t work that way and public opinion will have to shift first. Then whatever they do will be seen as legitimate.
Okay, that was long-winded, but hey, you asked.
I understand that 2,025 delegates are needed to win the nomination, however this number includes delegates from Florida and Michigan. Until after the first ballot and the delegates from Florida and Michigan can be involved, should not the required
number be reduced? I.E. if Florida was supposed to have 210 delegates and Michigan was supposed to have 128 delegates plus 29
superdelegates, then there are 379 less delegates. Dividing that number by 2 (for a majority) would meanyou could subtract 183 from 2,025, then the candidate should only need 1842 delegates to win the nomination without Fla or Michigan involved.
And they want me to trust them with the federal budget???
Jim has hit the answer squarely on the head! I was going to make the exact same recommendation until I read his comment. I wonder why this hasn’t been mentioned before. It seems so logical and reasonable.
After the first round of balloting in the convention, are delegates still obligated to vote for whom they were pledged? Doesn’t the convention become wide open if the first round of balloting does not declare a winner? Add to this the delegates from Michigan and Florida who are completely unpledged and it makes for a very interesting convention. I see nothing wrong with the Democratic Party not having a declared candidate before the convention begins.
I think that the rules should not be changed to fit the circumstances. To do so would invite from Clinton or Obama supporters (whoever ends up losing the nomination) the reasonable uproarious yell that the process got rigged. This means that superdelegates should not be obliged to vote for whomever got the most votes in their district. Superdelegates should be permitted to use their brains to whatever strong-willed or weak-willed conclusion they end up with. It also means that the Michigan and Florida delegations should not be seated just like that. If the states of Michigan and Florida want to have delegates to the convention, they need to re-run their contests, since their first contests weren’t in compliance with the nominating rules. Overall, having a thoroughly and transparently rule-following process from here on out is essential to keeping the nomination from being curdled by justified suspicions of a rigged process.
I think either candidate would be strong in the fall elections. I certainly would support either Clinton or Obama over McCain. Faced with a choice in the Ohio primary, I voted for Barack Obama because he has been more consistent in speeches and votes and other legislative action in his support for the Constitution. Hillary Clinton has shown a greater willingness to compromise constitutional liberty including the right of free speech, which is disturbing to me. (Neither comes anywhere close to John McCain on that score). Anybody who reads here long enough knows how much I rant about constitutional liberty. While are other differences between the two that matter for me, that was the clincher for me in the end. (A close second was Hillary Clinton’s capitulation on the Iraq War vote, which lines right up with the other indications that she’s willing to toss progressive policy under the bus for the sake of perceived advantage.)
What I’ve suggested in the first paragraph, I think, would favor Hillary Clinton slightly. Obama would like the superdelegates to commit to the popular votes in their districts (where the superdelegates are elected officials). That would favor Obama, but I don’t favor that as a solution; superdelegates should act of their own volition because that’s what the rules stated at the beginning. Clinton would lose out by not simply having the Michigan and Florida delegations sat as they are at the convention; however, I think that these states would be strong pro-Clinton states (by economic class position for Michigan and by age demographics for Florida) even if they were re-run.
I think that the rules are the rules.Everyone involved were aware of the rules back in January. What should happen now is that ” nothing should happen” as far as Michigan and Florida are concerned.The votes do not count.If we try to change the rules in the middle of the stream, we as Democrats are no better than the Republicans in the 2000-2004 elections.
Obama would benefit more from this solution but this is how it should be because he followed the rules.
If Hillary was sitting where he is now, would we be having this conversation?
I voted for Hillary in the Ohio Primary but if she gets what she wants concerning Michigan and Florida, I will not vote come November if she wins.If she has to change the rules to win, that makes her just as crooked as the others. I will have no part in supporting her.
If Michigan and Florida are allowed to seat their delegates in the first round of balloting, then their play to break the rules and hold early primaries would have payed off for them. If this happens, what do you think will happen to the already front-loaded primary season for the 2012 election? There will be no way that the Democratic party will have the authority to be able to bring any sort of order to the process. If we think this year’s primary season was bad, wait till next time.
Well, if they hold new primaries/caucuses, then Michigan and Florida are no longer breaking the rules, right?
That’s true. But, who pays for the new primaries? Can these states bring them off in just a couple of months without any glitches that would make the results questionable?
Caucuses are relatively costless… but, oh, that would favor Obama, since his supporters have been more likely to show up to caucuses. Hmmm. Iiiiinteresting.
I am still in limbo about the appropriate candidate for President. I like Mr. Barack Obama and Hillary. I think to vote Republican at this stage would be Irresponsible. I like the Change that Mr. Obama Is talking about, on the other hand Hillary has had a grate deal of experience in the white house She understands how to work the system. On the other hand Hillary may have made some friends who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo The status quo in healthcare’s not acceptable. I understand that each of the candidates are working to give us “The same as what we get in the congress is exactly. What does that give us and what will we need to pay for. Will the person drop the requirement of the disabled to be retired to get Medicare why not make it posable to have a job and give us co-pays that we can pay without making a choice between food and rent and paying our healthcare. I want to work and pay my CO pays and be able to afford a place to live. Right now I am on Medicare and living in my parents home I am 40 years old and should be able to afford a place of my own and have the medical coverage I need without relying on my parents for a place to live and the government for a stipend to live on. If there are any spelling errors I am sorry
there are, by the way, recent McCain vs… stats. see http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/03/06/electoral-math-as-of-030608-obama-280-mccain-258/ and http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/03/06/electoral-math-as-of-030608-clinton-276-mccain-262/
note that they don’t make it clear when the win is small — for instance, in this poll clinton wins FL and obama loses it, but obama’s loss is within the margin of error (and of course, clinton’s victory may not pan out if mccain picks jeb as his running mate).
what about selecting FL & MI delegates by phone surveys? way cheaper than primaries, not as slanted toward obama as caucuses, and crappy as far as fairness and thoroughness go, but hey, it’s how the political machine works these days anyway.
i’d support either that, or a caucus, and i wouldn’t actively oppose a split of the delegates betweent he primaries already done and a caucus still to be run, especially if the votes not cast for clinton were all counted as for obama in the prmaries already run. again, totally lame, i know, but it’s an approximationt hat doesn’t cost $20 million to run, and gets closer-to-accurate than what we currently have.
It seems to me, that on the dem side both candidates have lost sight of what the electorate wants. (You remember them,”We the people”).
The 04′election was a message to the dems to change the status quo and take back the country for the people. We have so far seen NO attempt to impeach and imprison the wrongdoers or correct the many errors in government. We have however been subjected to over years worth of obscenely expensive electioneering which will undoubtedly result in even more obscene big business management of our country.
Clinton and Obama need now to stop their corporate sponsored bickering and work together as a TEAM to unite the Democrats behind the people to correct the attrocious policies and directives of the current administration. Without this team work and unity, the dems will LOSE. The election, the support of the people who elected them and the party that sponsored them.
As far s McCain is concerned, he is just another pawn in the neo-cons package. This is the guy who never worked a day, but believes that Americans are lazy, but the same lazy Americans can serve till doomesday fighting an unwinnable war in an a country that doesn’t want them. He will probably win the election by a narrow margin and continue the present disasterous policies of the present administration under the watchfull eye of the tax relieved foreign investment/offshore bankers who will really be running the country.
And we must not forget the effects of Rove/Cheney. They are still at work behind the scenes. Spitzer sex scandal, Illegal phone taps. Drugs in the drinking water. Lead paint everywhere. Oil at $120 per gallon on election day??
Wake up America the Phillistines ARE upon you!