The Coming Brokered Democratic Convention

The Coming Brokered Democratic Convention
By Mark Hyman
Published 3/3/2008 12:07:32 AM

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.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12832

Obama has the money and the Momentum

More and more , it is plain to see who is building momentum and strength. MJ

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Obama Raises $7M Post Super Tuesday

Feb 7 11:28 AM US/Eastern
By CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has raised $7.2 million for his presidential campaign since the first polls closed on Super Tuesday night, his campaign said Thursday, a remarkable figure that is causing concern among supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Meanwhile Thursday, the Clinton campaign asked Obama to debate once a week, but he demurred.

Obama, riding a wave of fundraising from large donors and small Internet contributors, also raised $32 million in January.

Clinton acknowledged Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Obama was outraising and outspending her heading into Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests. Some senior staffers on her campaign also are voluntarily forgoing paychecks as the campaign heads into the next round of contests.


MORE

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8ULI8980&show_article=1

Obama claims delegate lead

Obama claims delegate lead
By: Mike Allen
February 6, 2008 11:09 AM EST

In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night.

The Obama camp now projects topping Clinton by 13 delegates, 847 to 834.

NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party's complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton.

Clinton was portrayed in many news accounts as the night’s big winner, but Obama’s campaign says he wound up with a higher total where it really counts — the delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at this summer’s Democratic convention.

With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show.

The running totals for the two, which includes previous contests and the party officials known as “superdelegates,” are only about 70 delegates apart, Russert said.

The bottom line is that the two are virtually tied.


Race, sex divide Dems; ideology splits GOP
Super Tuesday: A split decision
Media restrained in Super Tuesday coverage
Obama won 13 states, some of them smaller, and Clinton won eight.

On Wednesday morning, the battle was on to shape public perceptions about Tuesday.

The Clinton campaign said it was crunching its delegate numbers but was not sure it was correct that Obama got more.

The Obama campaign sent an e-mailed statement titled: “Obama wins Super Tuesday by winning more states and more delegates.”

Campaign Manager David Plouffe said: “By winning a majority of delegates and a majority of the states, Barack Obama won an important Super Tuesday victory over Sen. Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary.”

“From Colorado and Utah in the West to Georgia and Alabama in the South to Sen. Clinton’s backyard in Connecticut, Obama showed that he can win the support of Americans of every race, gender and political party in every region of the country,” Plouffe said. “That’s why he’s on track to win Democratic nomination, and that’s why he’s the best candidate to defeat John McCain in November.”

The Obama campaign attached an Excel spreadsheet containing “state-by-state estimates of the pledged delegates we won last night, which total 845 for Obama and 836 for Clinton — bringing the to-date total of delegates to 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton.”