Today one pledged delegate in Alaska moves from Clinton to Obama. Not sure the story behind that one, quite possibly just adjustments as the process finalizes. In addition, Obama gets three more superdelegates and Clinton gets one more superdelegate. Net for today, Obama gains four, Clinton stays even.
Updated stats:
Delegate count is: Obama 1978, Clinton 1780, Edwards 7
In percent terms that is: Obama 52.5%, Clinton 47.3%, Edwards 0.2%
2026 delegates are needed to win.
There are 285 delegates yet to be determined.
Obama needs 48 more delegates to win.
Clinton needs 246 more delegates to win.
In percentage terms, that means:
Obama needs 16.8% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 28.3% before KY/OR.)
Clinton needs 86.3% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 74.4% before KY/OR.)
Now, with the updated numbers from DCW if Clinton gets her best case scenario on Saturday (full seating of Florida and Michigan using existing results) Clinton would gain 193 delegates, Obama would gain 97 delegates and Edwards would gain 11 delegates. The new totals would be Obama 2075, Clinton 1973, Edwards 18. The new magic number would be 2209.
With that:
Obama would need 134 more delegates to win (38.1% of what would then be remaining).
Clinton would need 236 more delegates to win (67.0% of what would then be remaining).
And that is Clinton’s BEST case.
Current (admittedly very limited) polls would indicate Obama getting about 40 delegates from the remaining 3 primaries. Which would mean he only needs about 8 more superdelegates to be able to clinch this thing on June 3rd… with no Michigan and Florida.
Rumor has it that Obama has a few dozen superdelegates lined up who have privately committed to declare in his favor within a week of the primaries ending on June 3rd. If we don’t have Clinton’s best case, but something more like the proposal to seat the two delegations at half strength, that will probably be enough to clinch it.
We shall see. The next big event is the Rules Committee meeting on Saturday. Without it, this would almost certainly be over one week from right now. If they move the finish line back a bit, it will take a little longer, but probably only a few days.
We’re just going through the motions now.
(OK, really, we’ve just going through the motions since April 23rd if not even earlier, but now I think even Hillary knows it… at least I hope she does.)
Michigan selected 36 Uncommitted delegates at their District Conventions in April. The state of these 36 delegates, specifically whether they have officially endorsed Obama, has become important in advance of this weekend’s RBC meeting. Knowing how many of the 36 are committed to Obama could make the difference in what type of deal the Obama campaign is willing to accept. We asked our readers to help us out, and they did.
Information was hard to come by – We weren’t even able to find the names of 5 of the 36 delegates.
Of the remaining 31, 30 of them have been reported to support Obama, but there aren’t good sources for 12 of the 30. We will continue to look for verifiable sources for the rest of these delegates.
But we do have good sources for 18 delegates, and therefore we are moving 18 Uncommitted delegates into the Obama column in our Michigan/Florida sidebar counter, as well as in Scenario 5 in FL & MI By The Numbers.
Today’s round of polls includes a poll for Minnesota that pushes Obama’s “last five polls” average lead over 10%, moving the state from “Weak Obama” to “Strong Obama”. This is the first state added to Obama’s “Strong” column since way back in March. Thus the streak of good poll results for Obama continues. Since only “Leaning” states moving back and forth affect my “best case scenarios” rather than strong or weak states, the summary does not change.
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 313, Obama 225
Obama Best Case – Obama 333, McCain 205
And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 277, McCain 261
Six more supers today. Five for Obama, One for Clinton.
New stats:
Delegate count is: Obama 1974, Clinton 1780, Edwards 7
In percent terms that is: Obama 52.5%, Clinton 47.3%, Edwards 0.2%
2026 delegates are needed to win.
There are 289 delegates yet to be determined.
Obama needs 52 more delegates to win.
Clinton needs 246 more delegates to win.
In percentage terms, that means:
Obama needs 18.0% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 28.3% before KY/OR.)
Clinton needs 85.1% of the remaining delegates to win. (It was 74.4% before KY/OR.)
As a note of interest, based on the latest polls in Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, I expect Obama will pick up about 40 delegates in those primaries. That would putt him potentially only 12 delegates away from the win if that were to happen.
That assumes of course no Florida and Michigan. But conventional wisdom at this point is that there will be some seating of Florida and Michigan this weekend, pushing the magic number further out and therefore putting Obama a bit further away from the win… although still a lot closer than Clinton.
I meant to blog about this back on the 18th, but I got busy and never did.
Since I was an Obama delegate, I got on a whole lot of mailing lists, both the national Obama mailing lists, and local ones. On the 18th I got an email from one of the local Obama coordinators for the 41st district here in Washington. I’ll refrain from actually calling him out by name. And I think it exemplifies everything that made the local Democratic events ones that turned me off so much and made me want to vote Republican instead. Here is the relevant quote:
It is likely that things will not be completed until after the DNC concludes its March 31st meeting regarding Michigan and Florida, but there is a truce of sorts in effect – the Obama campaign is not attacking Senator Clinton, and Senator Clinton has begun to focus her ire on Senator McCain. This allows her campaign and her supporters the dignity they desire for their campaign as they begin to wind down and we begin to learn to work together again against our real enemy.
This is the kind of thing that bothers me so so much. Republicans are NOT the “enemy”. Or at least they should not be. Even if you identify very strongly with the positions of the Democratic party, you SHOULD be viewing the Republicans as people who disagree with you on some issues, and on even more differ on the correct approach, but you should recognize that the vast majority of them are honorable people trying to do what they believe is right. The differences should be ones that one could discuss intelligently and calmly. You should be able to respect the person on the other side, even if you disagree.
But once you cross the line, and start thinking of those who differ with you politically as “enemies” then you have crossed a significant line. You are certainly no longer someone I want to associate with.
And the local Democratic events were full of these hyperpartisans, who view the Republicans as “enemies” and see no value in the views of those on the other side, no need to try to understand where they are coming from, no need to look for common ground.
These are the people who are dangerous. And the analogues exist in the Republican party as well of course. The people who truly KNOW that they are right and that their “enemies” are wrong. Who have no room in their worldview for doubt and shades of grey, and acknowledging that sometimes the other guy has a point.
And it is surprising to me that so many of them are Obama supporters. Have they not read his books? He speaks quite a bit about not dismissing people who disagree, and learning from them when they are right, etc. Anybody who truly believes that the Republicans are “enemies” should not be an Obama supporter.
Of course, there are many, including those on the right, who insist that the bipartisan centrist rhetoric of Obama is indeed only rheotric, and the reality of Obama is actually a hyperpartisan leftist. I certainly hope they are wrong.
But after all, in 2000 George W Bush sold himself as a centrist, a “compassionate conservative”, etc, etc, and we all see how that ended up.
All of this reminds me of my strong feelings that divided government is best. That regardless of who is in power in the White House, it is almost imperative that the congress should be held by the opposite party. Whenever both are controlled by the same party, you are just asking for trouble. (Or apparently, if you do have divided government, but the party running the congress is too gutless to exercise power, you also have no protection… the key is that there should always be significant tension between congress and the white house… with congress jealously guarding its powers and defending against the growth of executive power… so as to prevent most action other than that which truly has near universal support.)
I sent a long email to someone on that topic a couple months ago. I’ll have to dig it up sometime and post it.
Brandy turned me on to this fun game. Well, Brandy’s version is a little different, but here are my rules.
Start with by clicking “Random Article” on Wikipedia. Then click the first link in each article (not counting standard navigation and disambiguation links and and such not counting pages you have already gone to) and just see where you travel.
OK, that’s 20, so I’m going to stop. OK, so maybe it wasn’t that much fun. Of course, in Brandy’s version she actually reads each of the pages and learns about whatever the subject matter is, and usually starts from a page she actually had some interest in rather than doing the random thing, but whatever. :-)
I’ve of couse spent many hours flipping between wikipedia pages before and ended on all sorts of tangents, and there is a famous cartoon about that… it is the “first link” thing that makes this different.
Yeah, OK, fine. Maybe the other way is better. :-)
I’ve been bad, it has been a couple weeks since we saw this. Mother’s Day weekend actually, so just about exactly two weeks ago. Amy was away at a sleepover, so Brandy and I did dinner and a movie. The waiter messed up our order when we went to eat, and then we went to the movie.
I hadn’t realized just how long it had been since we had gone to a movie. The last one was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix back in July of last year. That’s probably a bit too long. We should go out to movies more often.
Anyway, it was pretty much what you would expect from a superhero flick. It was light. It was entertaining. There was some action. It was funny at times (the robots). It did the job it was supposed to do.
It was a fun way to spend the evening. I ate lots of popcorn. It was a good evening.
As with most films I watch though, I don’t think I’ll feel any need to watch it again. But would I go to the sequel when it comes out? Sure. I’d do that.
