DONE (Democrats Over Nominating Elitists)

[...] race42008.com wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Just in case this little bit got missed in all the Obama campaign panic and dolling out of promises to get now meaningless endorsements, here it is for all to see: Hillary is leading the popular vote: Clinton: 16,691,283 Obama: 16,647,926 Also, for those of you who like to crunch numbers, take a look at these spreadsheets: From TalkLeft, Bud White explains:   The Obama campaign has argued that Super Delegates ought to vote in accordance with the “will” of the people. Really? Then let’s [...]

[...] hopperbach wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptJust in case this little bit got missed in all the Obama campaign panic and dolling out of promises to get now meaningless endorsements, here it is for all to see: Hillary is leading the popular vote: Clinton: 16,691,283 Obama: 16,647,926 Also, for those of you who like to crunch numbers, take a look at these spreadsheets: From TalkLeft, Bud White explains:   The Obama campaign has argued that Super Delegates ought to vote in accordance with the “will” of the people. Really? Then let’s run the numbers. Under that metric, who would have a lead in Super Delegates? The Super Delegate total from the states that Hillary has won thus far (including FL and MI) is 418, to Obama’s 372. If the MI delegates are split 50/50, Clinton still wins 403.5 to Obama’s 386.5. If Super Delegates are counted according to Barack’s formula, Hillary wins the nomination. Period. The numbers are even more impressive after Hillary crushed Obama in West Virginia. [...] [...]

There’s one major flaw in Bud White’s spreadsheets. States are not “winner take all”….so why are Super Delegates in this hypothetical system?

She narrowly won Indiana, so why should she receive ALL of their super delegates? The same can be said for all the states on the list.

[...] Greg Sargent wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe Super Delegate total from the states that Hillary has won thus far (including FL and MI) is 418, to Obama’s 372. If the MI delegates are split 50/50, Clinton still wins 403.5 to Obama’s 386.5. If Super Delegates are counted … [...]

Hey Nicholas,

The Obama campaign has said that the Superdelegates should vote with the “will of the people.” In many cases they have argued that superdelegates should vote for the candidate that won the popular vote in their state (except when it works against them with Kerry, Kennedy, Richardson, etc). That is why these spreadsheets are important. It says below them that according to the Obama campaign’s own metrics, that superdelegates should vote for her. Plus, she is also ahead in the popular vote right now.

Sorry for the confusion.

Sure, but remember it’s the “will of the people” not the “will of the state”. Super delegates have constituency bases within states, and should represent that base. If I’m a superdelegate, and my district votes heavily for Hillary but my state is won by Obama, for whom should I cast my vote? The “will of my people” says I should vote for Hillary. The numbers you posted don’t echo that thought.

And I hate to beat a dead horse, but it appears that Obama leads in the popular vote. The numbers from RealClearPolitics.com suggest he leads by 500 thousand votes.

Why is it that your numbers are so different?

BO fanatics keep on giving new rules to make their case and the party goes along with it. Pelosi even stumps for it until she recieve warning that she has been breaking the rules.

The rules says that if none of the pledged delegates reach a magic number, the superdelegates should make their decision according to their own conscience and judgment only. Superdelegates can change their mind any time they want. So they have to go to convention and cast their vote for the candidate.

Now BO’s campany are trying to push Hillary out before the convention. They are bending the rules for their own inventions. For a closed match, we need fairness else the wound will never heal. Do it according to rules set out. They have never followed the context of the rules. Go to the convention to get the nomination done.

Obama is a loose cannon! Hillary has the Power of the People! When everyone has voted it will be obvious that the only candidate capable of winning a GE is Hillary

TODAY’S LATEST!!!
No matter what Obama bullies and DNC try to tell you, Hillary is going through till the end and she can win!

Will the Democratic Race End on May 21?

May 16, 2008 04:59 PM ET | Michael Barone |

“Barack Obama’s campaign hopes it will. They’re putting out the word that they hope to announce on the night of May 20, after the results come in from the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, that their candidate has the 2,025 votes needed for the Democratic nomination. That would mean that the nomination would be settled before the May 31 rules committee meeting on the status of the disqualified Michigan and Florida delegations; this would deprive Clinton of a grievance but would not deprive Obama of the nomination. The June 1 primary in Puerto Rico, in which it seems possible Clinton could win a big popular-vote majority, would become moot. So could the June 3 primaries in South Dakota and Montana, which Obama is expected to win, but not by wide popular-vote margins. But he may not win: On May 13 he won the nonbinding primary in Nebraska by just 49 percent to 47 percent, with a popular vote margin of just 2,665—a vivid contrast with his 68 percent to 32 percent, 13,681-vote margin in the February 9 Nebraska caucus. (Which is more representative? Some 38,571 Nebraskans voted in the caucus, while 93,757 voted in the primary.)
There are a number of reasons to believe that Obama’s May 20 scenario won’t come to pass.
Obama is not likely to have enough superdelegates lined up by next Tuesday night. As this is written, RealClearpolitics.com has Obama at 1,891 delegates. Current polling gives him 58 percent of the two-candidate vote in Oregon and 34 percent of the two-candidate vote in Kentucky. That should give him, under the proportional representation rules, about 17 delegates in Kentucky and about 30 in Oregon. That puts him at 1,938. That means he needs to add 87 superdelegates between Friday and Tuesday night. He’s been getting four or five a day, it seems, even after his bad defeat in West Virginia, but he needs a lot more than that.
Actually, he needs more than 87. Conversations with Democratic superdelegates and insiders have convinced me that no one wants to be identified as the superdelegate who single-handedly decided the Democratic nomination—that is, who rejected either the first woman or the first black with a serious chance to be nominated. I expect the Obama campaign to announce a whole bunch of superdelegates at once that, together, put him well over the top. My guess is that the Obama campaign is trying to compile such a list, and that it will come up short.
Also, it won’t be particularly graceful to make such an announcement on the evening of May 20—or, rather, at least in the Eastern time zone, in the early hours of May 21. The last Kentucky polls close at 6 p.m. Central time, which is 7 p.m. Eastern time. My experience has been that Kentucky counts votes very quickly, so the result will probably be known before 8 p.m. Central. Moreover, Kentucky is likely to give Clinton a solid majority—solid enough that the state can be called for her at 7 p.m. Eastern time. She will add to the popular vote plurality over Obama (if Florida and Michigan are counted) that she had after Pennsylvania, lost after North Carolina and regained again after West Virginia.
That’s not likely to be erased by the Oregon result: Oregon is smaller than Kentucky, and Clinton’s percentage of the two-candidate vote in polls in Kentucky is notably higher than Obama’s in Oregon. But we will be waiting a while for the Oregon result. Oregon has all mail-in ballots, and they must be in the hands of election officials by 8 p.m. on May 20. That’s 8 p.m. Pacific time for most of the state, which is 11 p.m. Eastern time. Nor is there an exit poll (there are not polling places at which to accost exiting voters). So we’ll have at least four hours between the time we know the Kentucky result and the time we begin to get the Oregon results.
If I were the Obama campaign, and I had a passel of superdelegate votes putting me over the top that I wanted to announce, would I want to do it during the daytime of May 20? It hardly seems sporting to do that while Kentuckians and Oregonians are voting, and when no one can be sure exactly how many delegates Obama has won in those states. Would I want to do it in the evening, when Kentucky has announced and Oregon hasn’t? It seems kind of weird to announce victory after you’ve been shellacked in two primaries within a week. Would I want to wait till the Oregon count is in? At that point virtually everyone in the Eastern and Central time zones will be in bed. Would I want to wait till the next day? Probably so. But you then let Hillary Clinton have an opportunity for a victory speech after the Kentucky results are in. And the Clinton campaign will claim, as it has been doing lately, that the number of delegates required for the nomination is not 2,025, but 2,209. Which is true if the Florida and Michigan delegations vote at the convention—which the rules committee won’t begin deciding, at least publicly, until May 31. Which gives Clinton a warrant to go on campaigning—and to fight to seat Florida and Michigan—right up through June 3.
As the Baseball Crank blog points out, Obama has not had a good March, April, and May. Starting with the March 4 primaries, he’s trailed Clinton by 346,004 popular votes, and the blog estimates that he’ll lose the still-to-come primaries by another 186,497 popular votes. That would put Clinton ahead of Obama not only counting Florida and Michigan, but also counting Florida and Michigan and the imputed totals in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine caucuses.
One more point. The Obama campaign makes much of the fact that its candidate leads Clinton in “pledged delegates,” those chosen in primaries and caucuses. He has—by 153 more of those, according to the latest RealClearpolitics.com count. As this Wall Street Journal articles notes, Obama has picked up a net 145 delegate advantage in caucuses and a net delegate advantage of exactly seven delegates in primaries. Seven. And as the article also notes and as I noted above, Obama did much better in caucuses than in nonbinding primaries in the two states that held both, Washington and Nebraska. Obama and many, possibly most, superdelegates believe that he has a moral claim on superdelegate votes by virtue of his lead in pledged delegates. But that lead comes almost entirely from caucuses, which have many fewer participants and are presumably less accurately representative of the mass of Democratic voters than primaries.
Moreover, the Democrats’ systems of allocating primary delegates by proportional representation in congressional (or state Senate) districts as well as statewide gives a premium to a candidate who can monopolize the vote among an identifiable bloc of voters that tends to be heavily concentrated in certain congressional districts. I can think of just one such group: blacks. By carrying 80 percent or 90 percent of black voters, Obama has won 7-to-2 or similar margins in black-majority congressional districts, while in other districts with even numbers of delegates Clinton could win but do no better than 2-to-2 or 3-to-3 splits.
The Obama campaign has counterarguments to all this. Delegates are the metric by which the nomination is determined. Clinton had the chance to organize better in caucus states and inexplicably failed to do so. Everyone knew the proportional representation rules before the contest began. From these arguments, superdelegates could reasonably conclude that Obama has a moral entitlement to the nomination. But there are other arguments, which I’ve suggested above, from which superdelegates could reasonably conclude that Clinton is morally entitled to the nomination. So it’s possible that the Democratic race will be over on May 20—or, rather, May 21. But I think it’s more likely to go on to June 3, and maybe beyond.”

GO HILLARY!!! ALL THE WAY!!!

It’s an insult to reallocate our votes. Obama was on the ballot and chose to take his name off and Mark Brewer told us to vote ‘uncommitted’ if our candidate did this.

Now the DNC wants to Obama more delegates than all if all ‘uncommitted’ were just for him (vs. Edwards, etc.)

Either seat them the way we voted or don’t seat them at all - but do not pretend we count when DNC makes the decision!

I’m tired of politicians guys just using us, and if they don’t use the real senario it would be worse than FL 00.

First Superdelegates exist in case we’re not smarts enough to vote for the right one (notice how they always point out how stoopid and unedjakated Hillary voters are).

Now DNC wants to ‘count’ the votes by making up numbers different than actually voted.

We deserve more respect than that.