There is only one thing the public can be certain of regarding
the Democratic presidential nomination: without a miracle, there
will be a brokered convention. Senator Barack Obama was leading
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the delegate count going into the
Super Tuesday II primary elections on March 4. Obama held 1,193
primary delegates to Clinton’s 1,038. The status of the super
delegates is meaningless because their pledges today may not carry
any meaning come the Democratic nominating convention in Denver
during the last week of August.
A Democratic candidate needs to reach a minimum of 2,025
delegates to clinch the nomination outright. Clinton will not reach
that figure before the last primary election is held in Puerto Rico
on June 7. Neither will Obama. The Illinois senator needs 832 more
delegates to reach the magic number of 2,025. There are only 981
remaining primary delegates that are up for grabs. Three hundred
seventy delegates will be decided on March 4 and 611 will be
divvied up across 12 primaries between March 8 and June 7. Obama
would have to win an astonishing 85% of the remaining 981 delegates
in order to claim the Democratic nomination outright. There are no
winner-take-all primaries for the Democrats. Obama will never get
the needed 832 delegates. He may fall short of reaching 2,025
delegates by as many as 250.
This means that neither Obama nor Clinton will tally the needed
2,025 delegates when the primary election season is completed. The
pair will have eleven weeks between Puerto Rico’s primary election
on June 7 and the convening of the Democratic convention on August
25 to persuade super delegates to support their candidacy. A lot
can happen in 11 weeks. There will be horse trading, influence
peddling and cajoling. It will be a real knife fight to the end.
Layer on top of this real-world events. Everything from the
economy, Iraq, terrorism and damaging revelations of the ties
between Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the land developer currently
under federal indictment, could greatly influence the super
delegates’ commitments. Still, the only date that really matters
for the super delegates is the day they cast their ballots in late
August.
Complicating the matter for Obama is the status of the 313
primary delegates Clinton picked up in the Michigan and Florida
primaries. The Democratic Party has stated it would not seat the
Michigan and Florida delegates because those two states moved up
their primary dates without national party blessing. But will
national party leaders really not seat the Michigan and Florida
delegates? Not hardly.
National Democratic leaders realize their nominee must capture
at least one and possibly both Michigan and Florida if their
candidate is to win in November. Party leaders cannot afford to
disenfranchise the voters in those two states and give them a
reason to stay home in November. On top of this, Clinton will not
let the status of the Michigan and Florida delegates pass without a
fight. She could turn to the courts for relief.
In the end, the remaining 16 primaries are simply a beauty
contest. The final competition for the Democratic nomination starts
after June 7. It will not end with any certainty until the last
week in August.
