Democratic Convention Watch helpfully reports on three proposals to be put forward before the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on Saturday, May 31.
Barack Obama’s Michigan proposal: 64 delegates to Clinton, 64 delegates to Obama.
Hillary Clinton’s Michigan proposal: 73 delegates to Clinton, 55 delegates to Obama.
The Michigan Democratic Party proposal: 69 delegates to Clinton, 59 delegates to Obama.
The Michigan Democratic Party proposal splits the difference between Obama’s plan and Clinton’s plan.
Let’s assume that outside of the state of Michigan, Hillary Clinton gets everything she wants. This means two things:
1. In the Puerto Rico (55 pledged delegates), South Dakota (13 pledged delegates) and Montana (16 pledged delegates) primary votes to be happening on Sunday and Tuesday, Barack Obama gets only a third of the 84 delegates. 28 delegates for Obama, 56 delegates for Clinton.
This is a completely harebrained result, but let’s go harebrained for Clinton and assume Barack Obama gets blown out of the water with delegates in the remaining primaries.
2. Florida’s 185 pledged delegates would be fully recognized and apportioned according to vote results in the non-sanctioned primary. 121 of those delegates are apportioned according to congressional district results, with 67 delegates to Clinton, 13 delegates to John Edwards, and 41 to Barack Obama. To continue to favor Clinton, let’s have the remaining 64 delegates be apportioned according to the vote result: 33 to Clinton, 9 delegates to John Edwards, and 22 delegates to Barack Obama. The total delegate count would be 100 delegates to Clinton, 22 delegates to John Edwards, and 63 delegates to Barack Obama.
This is also a completely harebrained result, since even Florida is only asking for half its delegates to be seated. But again, let’s go harebrained to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt here. And let’s not even count the John Edwards delegates for Obama, even though Edwards has endorsed Obama. Woo hoo! Craaaazy!
With Michigan and Florida being fully seated, exactly as Hillary Clinton wants, the number of delegates a candidate needs to gain in order to grab the nomination is 2,209. Again, this is if Hillary Clinton gets absolutely everything she wants with Florida and gets huge blowouts in all three remaining states.
As of right now, Barack Obama has 1,982 delegates. As of right now, Hillary Clinton has 1,781 delegates. Adding in the miraculous pro-Clinton results for Florida, Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana — but not yet counting Michigan — Barack Obama would have 2,073 delegates and Hillary Clinton would have 1,937 delegates.
Now let’s move on to the Michigan decision, assuming Hillary Clinton gets all she wants in Florida and scores immense blowouts in all three remaining states.
1. If Barack Obama gets what he wants on Saturday, he ends up with 2137 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2,001 delegates.
2. If the state of Michigan gets what it wants on Saturday, Barack Obama ends up with 2132 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2006 delegates.
3. If Hillary Clinton gets what she wants on Saturday, Barack Obama ends up with 2128 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2010 delegates.
Yes, even if Hillary Clinton gets everything she wants with both Michigan and Florida and scores humongous wins in the remaining three state contests, she will still be 118 delegates behind Barack Obama.
With 2,209 delegates to win if Clinton gets everything she wants, 279 delegates will be left to go to the Clinton camp or the Obama camp. Some of these were awarded to Edwards and have to decide what to do, some of these are superdelegates who really should have decided by now, and some of these are “add-on” delegates that are confusingly awarded at state meetings after primaries are done. To win the nomination, Hillary Clinton will have to win 199 of those delegates.
The Bottom Line:
In order to secure the nomination,
Assuming Hillary Clinton wins two-thirds of delegates in all three remaining primaries,
and
Assuming Hillary Clinton gets all the delegates she wants from Michigan,
and
Assuming Hillary Clinton gets all the delegates she wants from Florida,
then she will still have to somehow gain the support of 72 percent of the remaining delegates in order to capture the Democratic presidential nomination.
No, it’s not literally impossible. But even giving her every benefit of the doubt (and then some) at every stage of the process over the next week, Hillary Clinton will still have to perform a Sisyphean task to gain the nomination.
If Barack Obama gets even something close to what he wants in any of the delegate-awarding events over the next week, Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a chance.
wish I could cite the source for this but cannot: have read that in likely scenario of less-than full seating ruled on by the Committee [including of course Hillary's 13 supporters] Hillary stays in the race on grounds she plans to go to the Convention to appeal – giving her more time to foment strife, perhaps garner SDs.
And in the less likely scenario of full seating, in which case Barack falls below 150 votes in excess of Hillary, Hillary plans to stay in the race on grounds that the split between the candidates is now close and she wants thte time to convince SDs to switch.
[sigh]
What about Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that also didn’t follow the rules. Thier delegates are being seated?
Dear Anonymous:
The other states got waivers from the DNC, Florida and Michigan did not. It is a pity that Sen. Clinton spent so much time in Law School and did not emerge with any respect for the rule of law.
Puffmeister, I believe that Rachel Maddow has described that theory.
This post has been neutral regarding whether the rules should be followed. Anonymous Clinton supporter, I don’t think you want the rules to be followed. If Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida AND Michigan delegates are all unseated, Hillary Clinton loses for sure.
I’m asking. I don’t see anything at all on the Obama website. There is story Obama’s lawyers prevented Mich and Florida from having an election the DNC would accept. Also asking why the superdelegates were announcing support for candidates before seeing the primary results. Were’t they put in place to prevent another embarrassmentlike McGovern 1972?
Yeah, you’re just asking. There is a story that tree frogs regularly descend on Barack Obama’s office in Tennessee like something out of a biblical plague, too. That’s the nice thing about stories. As soon as it comes out of your mouth, bing! It’s a story!
Obama said repeatedly he would support another election. Michigan and Florida chose this spring not to have elections the DNC would accept.
Mrs Clinton thinks she will have the popular vote with Florida and Michigan.Many republicans voted for her just to weaken the democrats.The people really picked Obama.Mrs Clinton only cares about herself and will do anything to win.I hope Obama wins the nomination and picks someone other than Clinton to be his vice president.