Legal Commentary

The Delegate Race Isn't Over

By Jeralyn

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD explains why Hillary Clinton has some lifelines open to her in terms of the pledged delegate count and the upcoming ten races.

First, in Hillary's Own words, watch the video:

As Jerome says, Hillary sounds ready to go to the mat over Florida and Michigan. But,there's other options open to her as well. Jerome writes: [More...]

Including MI & FL, Clinton is only behind in pledged-delegates by 46-56 delegates, which could be halved in Pennsylvania alone. 46 is the number going off of DCW, but 56 is what I got when using the Obama counting of pledged delegates, and adding in the 67 Obama got from FL and the 178 that Clinton got from FL and MI, that results in a 1485-1429 difference of delegates. DCW has a 1473 to 1427 margin. I imagine that 46-56 number gets updated a bit up and down with further final results coming in from the previous contests. It also should be noted that there are, in addition, 55 uncommitted delegates from MI, and 31 delegates still aligned with Edwards.

Obama's got everything going for him right now, he's in position to claim a victory by nearly all the measurements, most importantly the pledged delegate lead and the popular vote. However, he may have left an opening to Clinton by not fully cooperating with Clinton and the DNC to find a way to let MI and FL re-vote. They don't want to chance Clinton winning two more big states, but by not going along with it, they give Clinton a lifeline via her ability to count those states as they stand, and possibly, if Clinton manages to pick up enough pledged delegates, counting the FL and MI results from January, to claim she has the lead in pledged delegates.

The popular vote too, via RCP's numbers, has Clinton lifelines via FL's votes being counted, and less so (argumentatively at least), with MI's. Ironically, that might come down to whether Clinton is really strong in Puerto Rico, as some believe.

Jerome says if you're still in denial, check out this handy interactive vote chart by Jay Cost.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).