the Nebraska caucuses, the Washington State caucuses, the Virgin Islands
primary, and the Maine Caucus this weekend, and won all five contests by
a significant margin. He is close to taking enough of a lead in
regional delegates to neutralizing Senator Clinton's advantage in
superdelegates and formally take the lead, but he's still only halfway
to the nomination. This creates some interesting concerns about the
future strategy of the Clinton campaign, and the nature of the
delegates. There are still ways Senator Clinton can lose the regional
primaries and still be the nominee:
1. Use Florida and Michigan
Both of these states were stripped of their delegates by the national
party for holding early primaries, and they seemingly just realized that
Howard Dean wasn't kidding and they really are out of the whole process.
Both are pursuing reinstatement of their delegates, but most of the
Democrats refused to campaign in these states and weren't even listed on
the ballot in Michigan, so they don't have many delegates. On the other
hand, Senator Clinton campaigned in both states and promised to seat
their delegates if nominated, so she swept up in both primaries. If the
delegates are reinstated, they would mostly go to Senator Clinton.
This many not come to pass... because of the strong labor unions in the
area who don't want to be left out of the convention, Michigan may have
a caucus to assign delegates and Senator Obama would obviously be on the
ballot and campaign for those delegates. Florida is intending to keep
pursuing a legal challenge, but one possibility is that their delegates
will be assigned according to national proportions (likely split evenly
between the two candidates) and this would allow Florida to participate
in the convention but not to affect the nomination.
2. Win the Superdelegates
If the race stays close and she's behind, Senator Clinton can lock up a
lot of superdelegates to get herself the nomination. Some prominent
Democrats have denounced this idea as suicidally stupid, if political
insiders overrided the stated preference of Democrats who came out to
caucus in huge numbers for Senator Obama. Al Gore's campaign manager
Donna Brazile has said that the intended purpose of superdelegates is to
break a deadlock or hasten the nomination of an inevitable frontrunner,
and that she would quit the DNC if superdelegates actually reversed the
outcome of the regional primaries.
3. Get John Edwards' delegates
Since Senator Edwards suspended his campaign rather than dropping out
like Congressman Kucinich or Governor Richardson did, he hasn't released
his delegates and could still deliver them to somebody else in exchange
for say, the vice presidency, or being named attorney general. He
doesn't have that many delegates, but getting their votes would be
equivalent to a big win in a whole other state.
4. Steal Obama's delegates
A lot of these early contests are caucuses, in which voters get together
on the precinct level and choose delegates to district conventions,
where delegates will be chosen for the state convention. In my district
the vote was overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, but there is nothing to
prevent my fellow district convention delegates from choosing state
convention delegates who will support Hillary Clinton instead. In 1984,
Vice President Mondale won the nomination by getting unbound delegates
to switch their vote, and really anything can happen. Again though,
using my state as an example, Minnesota went so overwhelmingly for
Senator Obama that to actually swing the state convention for Senator
Clinton would invite a disastrous backlash, but she could pick up a few
more delegates if they switch sides.
Combine these elements together and that's a lot of delegates, but all
of these things only matter if the race is close and Obama is ahead,
since Clinton has the connections to pull these things off and I really
doubt Obama does. The more blatant this stuff is the less likely she'd
be to get away with it, and the harder it would be to convince
disenfranchised Democrats to show up and vote for her in the general
election. If she falls too far behind, Senator Clinton won't be able to
raise enough money to stay in the race anyways, and this weekend she
already started loaning money to her campaign to keep it afloat. If she
gets pummeled again in the Mid-Atlantic primaries tomorrow, that could
be the beginning of the end, because now that McCain is tightening his
grip on the Republican nomination, the Democrats want their nomination
settled quickly. If Senator Clinton does well tomorrow though, this may
not be over until the very end.
Delegates: (regional)
Clinton 1143 (920)
Obama 1125 (997)
Edwards 26 (26)
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