Sunday, June 01, 2008

The DNC Splits the Delegate Baby..


Your Votes Counted..... But Only Half of Them.
At long last, the DNC Rules Committee handed down it's ruling on the Florida and Michigan primaries. Although most of the people involved weren't completely happy, it was a pretty fair decision. With it, the nomination process is all but over. Obama wins.
In Florida, all of the votes were counted, but the delegate totals were cut in half. So, the disgruntled voters did have their votes counted, but the DNC was definitely going to penalize Florida for pushing the date up. Hillary Clinton won 105 delegates, and Obama got 76, which was how the actual votes went in January. In Michigan, where Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot (stupid), the DNC accepted a compromise from the State Democratic Party, which gave Clinton 69 delegates, and Obama 59. The Obama camp wanted a 50-50 split, and Clinton wanted 73-55, so the DNC basically split the difference. Then they halved everything......
In the end game, Clinton gained 24 delegates - not nearly enough to make up the 180 delegate deficit that she has. Now that this issue has been decided, the remaining Superdelegates will begin to drop towards Obama - including our own Jim Clyburn. Obama is only 50 delegates short, with 3 primaries left, and a ton of undecided superdelegates. Clinton can complain that they have more total votes than Obama, but as we learned in 2000, the popular vote does not matter - it's the delegates. And she doesn't have them........
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2 comments:

earlcapps said...

It shows the major faults in their rather complicated system of caucuses, superdelegates and proportional assignment of delegates.

If it hadn't been for the early caucuses, where Obama was able to focus his resources, Hillary probably would have this right now.

Anonymous said...

How many hanging chads from super delegates constitutes a critical mass to throw the electoral college into apoplexy?

Some of this crap seems intended to try to invalidate the electoral college process, by blaming this fiasco on the process of using electors.