Mathematical note

[mamadeb]

Neither Democratic candidate can get enough delegates to win. We're headed for a brokered election.

I'm sorry that my candidate has the nerve and stubborness not to lay down and die.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

We have a president who's "just that stubborn" -- combine that with poor judgment and a callous disregard for the truth, the Constitution, and the vast majority of the people he's supposed to serve, and we've gone from budget surpluses to the largest deficits in history, NOT counting the funding for the war he lied to get us into for his buddies' profit, and all the other things we could list to each other all day.

It's not Hillary's stubbornness that bothers me about her; it's her being a corporate apologist, and her willingness to adopt right-wing talking points without apparent critical consideration. (Among other things, but those are the two that stand out.) Those qualities, combined with stubbornness, in a president, don't reassure me.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Yes. And I have been concerned with all her recent pandering - she's NOT running a good campaign.

I just truly believe she'll do a better job once in office. The problem would be getting her there.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I'm not as convinced. It's not just her recent campaign, but her record going back to that awful pro-war vote that she took so long to repudiate that bothers me.

I'm not really convinced about Obama, either. I just think he's the least of the three evils we're still being offered (there were two or three goods, in there, but they got pruned early by the party and the media).

I'm curious: if, following the final primary in June (NOT today or tomorrow), the total delegate count (including committed supers) shows Obama has enough support to win a first-ballot nomination, do you think that Hillary should concede, or try to continue to change minds? Would it be worth the cost, in that scenario? Similarly, if by some magic enough supers committed to bring him to the magic number any time before the primaries end, would that be an appropriate time to concede? I'm not saying that Obama will make his nut at all before the convention, but if he does, does it make the difference?

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen - There are, according to the information I found, 133 more delegates available. (This (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_delegate_count.html)is my source for information - note that it counts superdelegates.

I assumed that Obama would get all the remaining delegates when I made my original post.

By those numbers, neither will get a first ballot nom.

If the numbers change (superdelegates, pledged or unpledged changing votes publically), then other things will change.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I must disagree, to the extent that I think there's a good chance of it happening:

Via http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/May07.html we see that the delegate count, while slightly uncertain as a result of the supers, is running roughly 1840-1685 in Obama's favor, with 2025 needed for the nomination. There are 217 delegates up for grabs in the last 6 primaries; if we give Obama only 45% of those (the states tend to be Hillary's demographics, but her margins haven't been large; the analysis at the site suggests that margin, but that he'll win some states), he gains 97 for a total of approximately 1937. With somewhere around 280-300 uncommitted superdelegates, he only has to convince somewhere around 100 to commit. The only question, in my mind, is their timing.

(You neglected the three primaries -- Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota -- at the bottom of the page, on the site you mentioned. That's where the extra delegates come from.)

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right. I missed the June primaries. I'm sorry about that.

And *if* Obama gets those, he will most likely get a first ballot nom. But at that point, the campaigns are over, and it wouldn't matter if Clinton did concede. (Yes, at that point, she should. For the good of the part.)

If they split them, which seems more likely, given how this campaign has gone, then it's time to crunch the numbers again.

[jonbaker.livejournal.com]

You know, NJ's primary used to be in June. In 1984, a week after the end of finals, I took a train down to Princeton on what turned out to be graduation day (1st Tuesday in June), just so I could vote in the primary.

I didn't know it was graduation day, I was just a freshman, you know? I just saw all these seniors packing up their rooms into their parents' cars, while I was walking across campus to the church which was my polling place.