|
|
| |
| Sat, May. 17, 2008 |  |
 |
|
||
| |
Delegate math Saturday, Mar 8, 2008 By Doug Thompson Don't take Democratic delegate math too seriously. Delegate counts matter. Picking a winner to run for president matters more. Sheer resolve may count most. You need 270 Electoral College votes to win the November election. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has won primary contests in states with a total of 193 Electoral College votes. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has won primaries in states that have 229 such votes. This gap exists despite Obama's greater number of victories, which includes an 11-state winning streak. He also spent much more money. The totals also don't include Florida or Michigan. The party kicked out those two big pro-Clinton states for violating rules. Unpledged delegates - party leaders - would love to please the rank and file by crowning the pledged delegate leader. Even Hillary voters, polls show, prefer a clearly elected winner. Unpledged delegates would also like a nominee who can win the Electoral College race. Unpledged delegates will put off their very tough decision and wait for the primaries to play out while hoping for a miracle. Barring a miracle, tension will mount and the rank and file will eventually prefer resolution to more suspense. Obama has an important advantage in this standoff. Black Democrats, his most loyal supporters, are the least likely to surrender on ratifying the choice of pledged delegates. No other group is less inclined to give up to suit expediency. They've heard promises about the "next election" before. Their resolve grows every time Clinton claims greater experience. Too many blacks have been passed over for a job or promotion because of somebody's "experience," or know someone who has. Neither candidate here has experience as president. Include other Obama supporters who won't budge on principle. You get quite a tree that's planted by the waters, as in "We Shall Not Be Moved." Suppose Clinton had Obama's primary results and he had hers. Now give Obama a further shift of just enough states to give him a delegate lead. This contest would be over. Unfortunately for him, Obama is not the candidate of untapped hopes and unknown potential anymore. He's built up a long record of primary results that has big, scary holes in it where big, election-winning states should be. The assumption's been among Democrats that the same voters will support either candidate in November. Run that theory past Ohio's real-world primary results. Ohio, of course, is one of those "key battleground states," to quote President Bush on something he got right. Marie Cocco of the Washington Post writes: "There is no papering over the depth of the problem Obama faced there. He won only five of the state's 88 counties, an inauspicious foundation for a general election campaign. Clinton trounced him among Catholic voters, 63 percent (to) 36 percent, according to exit polls. She beat him among voters in every income category and bested him by 14 points among those making less than $50,000 annually." Obama's trailing in Pennsylvania. That state will have 21 electoral votes. Obama will probably win Wyoming and Mississippi before Pennsylvania's April 22 primary. Wyoming and Mississippi have nine electoral votes. Obama's pattern of picking up sticks and dropping real wood could go on. Then there's the caucus issue. Primaries are elections. Caucuses are huddles by zealots, mostly in smaller states that can't or won't pay for a primary. Then there's Texas, with both. Clinton won the Texas primary. She lost badly the same night in Texas' caucus. Makes you wonder about caucuses, doesn't it? Obama's won 15 primaries and 12 caucuses. Clinton's won 12 primaries and two caucuses. One caucus Clinton "won" in Nevada gave Obama 13 delegates. She received 12. I've heard the explanation. Believe me, it's not worth repeating. Obama received 12 pledged delegates out of Idaho's caucus on Feb. 5. Clinton won the New Jersey primary the same day. She gained 11 pledged delegates more than Obama did. Every 1,407 people who showed up for the Idaho caucus earned their candidate a pledged delegate. The same result in New Jersey required more than 10,000 votes. Unpledged delegates should fall in line with pledged delegates: By that principle, a few backpackers in Idaho matter more than most of the voting Democrats of New Jersey. To be fair, everybody knew the rules and the flaws of caucuses before this campaign started. But everybody also knew the unpledged, so-called "superdelegates," had the right to check and balance caucuses by making up their own minds. That's why they're called superdelegates. I'll write about the popular vote issue after Pennsylvania votes. What happens next is up to Obama. Putting his faith in his delegate lead will get him defeated. He needs to show he hasn't peaked. Ominously for him, he slipped from a double-digit percentage point lead in North Carolina - a sizable state he can win - to 4 percent soon after Tuesday's returns were in. The last thing Obama should do is talk about the "inevitability" of a pledged delegate lead. Look what inevitability did for Hillary Clinton. --------- Doug Thompson is a Fayetteville-based reporter and columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Morning News. His e-mail address is dthompson@arkansasnews.com. |
