I Stand Corrected

Apparently, there are still at least a couple of journalists or pundits out there who understand the concept of delegates and their central role in the nominating process.

Given 24 hours to continuously banter for 6 weeks about a single Democratic Primary vote in Pennsylvania would allow for at least a minimal amount of time to devote to the actual process. Alas, it hasn't. What, with constantly searching for the next non-controversy to stoke continuously until, Presto!, you can say people care. No, actually looking at the process itself requires a small bit of research, and who wants to waste time with that when there's endless repetition of things other people say for you to drone on about.

Thankfully, Greg Giroux and Jonathan Allen at CQPolitics have taken the time so the talking heads won't have to.

That answer will be mainly determined not by the sum of the votes Clinton and Obama win in Pennsylvania, but rather by the state’s parts. Pennsylvania will send 187 Democratic delegates to the party’s national convention in Denver this August, and most of them — 103 to be exact — will be allocated according to the votes the candidates receive in each of the state’s 19 congressional districts.

And a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.

These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.

Of the state’s remaining 84 slots, only 55 pledged delegates will be distributed based on the statewide popular vote, with the state’s remaining 29 seats going to unpledged “superdelegates.”

As is made clear by the authors' breakdowns between the 19 congressional districts, the margin of victory is only important in a PR sense, and bears little effect of the outcome in terms of delegates. For the 103 delegates divvied up by district voting, the margin of victory needed to obtain more than a single delegate more than the opponent is essentially prohibitive. Giroux and Allen speaking of 4-delegate districts, of which there are 5: "So if Clinton defeats Obama 60 percent to 40 percent, the district delegates would split 2-2; if Obama defeats Clinton 60 percent to 40 percent, a 2-2 split would also ensue." Likewise, in a 5-delegate district, 70 percent of the vote would be needed to have a split other than 3-2.

Giroux and Allen continue in a detailed, district-by-district analysis and prediction (they arrive at Clinton 53, Obama 50). But the main point here is that even if they're off slightly--even completely inverse in most districts--the results won't change much unless one candidate absolutely trounces the other, which is implausible.

Even the 55 delegate divided by state-wide vote won't lend Clinton that large a margin. A 55-45 split for Clinton would yield her 30 delegates to Obama's 25. Even a highly-unlikely 60-40 divide would grant a 33-22 mix.

Given that a 20-point margin of victory is highly improbable, a best case scenario for Hillary would have her walking away from Pennsylvania with around a net gain of 10, perhaps 15, delegates. Not nearly enough to cover a margin of over 100.

Assuming Clinton wins Pennsylvania (a safe assumption at this point), the fact remains that nothing will change other than feeding fundraising and continued campaigning. A victory in the popular vote may help morale, but it is clearly not going to gloss over the fact that she is all-but mathematically eliminated from the race and has been for several months.

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Florida and Michigan Inanity

If there's one thing the March 4th primaries made clear, it's that nothing has been cleared up in the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. While the vote counting is still incomplete, most counts have Hillary Clinton chipping away at Barack Obama's delegate lead by single digits. Not nearly the sweeping momentum change she and the media would have you believe. Although she clearly demonstrated through the popular vote that her campaign is still viable, she is on record as saying the only thing that matters are delegates, not popular vote. Having used this line of reasoning to belittle Obama's recent run of 11 straight victories, it's more than a tad disingenuous to cozy up to the popular vote at this stage in declaring her own comeback.

A more blatant blow to the face of logic, though, is Clinton's insistence that the delegates from Florida and Michigan be seated at the Democratic convention August 25-28 in Denver. As has been well-documented, those two states were stripped of their delegates after moving their primaries ahead of the traditional first-run states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Problem is, in staking out this position, Clinton expects whoever will listen to ignore some very cogent pieces of information. First, the delegates were stripped last year, well before the heart of the campaign season. The two states were given an opportunity by the Rules committee of the DNC to rescind their decisions and chose not to. That is, the legislature of the states were told that failing to comply would render the voters of their respective states voiceless at the convention and chose not to. If the voters are angry, as Clinton proposes, they need look no further than their own legislatures.

Second, Obama (as well as others) removed his name from the Michigan ballot. While all candidates agreed not to campaign in Florida or Michigan, Clinton refused to remove her name from the Michigan ballot, edging out 'uncommitted' by 15 points.

In order to suggest that the voters are being disenfranchised by not having their delegates seated, she has to presuppose that the current results are the complete will of the voters. That seems rather dubious considering Michigan voters weren't even given the chance to vote for Obama and certainly voter turnout was tempered in both states by the evident futility rendered by the early dates. Short of holding new contests, there is no possibility a seating of the current delegates in any way reflects the true will of the people.

While Clinton's faux populism is quaintly charming, it's a false argument. Suggesting that voters are disenfranchised by not seating delegates is to ignore that the contests were not an accurate test to begin with, especially with Obama not even on the ballot in Michigan.

In combination with some of her previous inflammatory suggestions regarding caucasses and which states are important and which aren't, this stance illustrates not a forthright desire to have every vote count, but rather a specious attempt to treat logic and reason as malleable instruments to suit her particular circumstances.

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