The DNC and Dem leadership must decide-- Do nothing and allow a Clinton scorched earth attack or cut the required delegates to win by the number of MI and FL delegates no longer counted, in which case, Obama wins handily, exceeding the number needed to win, if even a small percentage of remaining uncommitted superdelegates commit for him.
The numbers tell the truth. There is no way Hillary can succeed in pulling ahead of Obama by winning primaries, even by massive margins, even if she won every remaining primary. Jonathan Alter's done the numbers and Hillary has virtually lost the race, in terms of pledged delegates. Even if there are "re-dos" in Michigan and Florida, she will not pull a very strong margin.
And in Florida, where the Republican legislature laughed at the potential for mischief their legislation of a primary date that violated DNC rules created, the vote is hopelessly distorted. If a "re-do" is run, Republicans will be able to change their registration and influence the vote. Independents who already influenced the MacCain election will be able vote twice, thus influencing two elections. This is what the Republicans in the Florida legislature wanted. It was predicted shortly after the Florida legislation was passed. Don't buy the line that it was passed unanimously. The onerous date designation was added on to a major bill requiring paper ballots-- a bill that Democrats could not have opposed.
The fact is, the DNC can do several things to help deal with this.
First, since Michigan and Florida delegates are no longer to be included in the primary, the number of delegates allotted to those states should be subtracted from the 50% plus 1 number of delegates required for either candidate to win.
Michigan has 156 delegates and Florida has 185, which totals 341, or 394 if you include disqualified superdelegates too. Deduct 171 from the number required to win and the new number to reach becomes 1854 or deleting the disqualified superdelegates too, we see 1827.
If you assume that the two candidates stay about even for the balance of the race, then, according to Slate's delegate calculator, Obama will have 1677 and Hillary will have 1537 pledged delegates.
Without the disqualified Michigan and Florida delegates included in the calculations of required delegates, Obama will have enough delegates, including the superdelegates already committed to him, without any more superdelegates committing, to win.
If you take Jonathan Alter's wildy unrealistic projection wherein Hillary wins massively in every race yet to be held, "it makes the score 1,625 to 1,584 for Obama."
Then, Obama will only need 30 more superdelegates, out of the hundreds of still uncommitted delegates. But that scenario is highly unlikely. More likely, Obama will have enough. That means that he already has enough to win.
If we extrapolate and hypothesize in fairytale land, where Alter has explored the unlikely Hillary-wins-all-the-states-scenario, then the superdelegates will have to decide.
If the DNC announces that, since the MI and FL delegates are not being included, the new number the candidates need to achieve to win the primary will be 1854. Then, if the DNC announces that, since further primary votes will NOT change the pledged delegate outcome, it encourages the superdelegates to declare for their candidate now, this primary season could be over.
Imagine how many hundreds of millions in campaign funds this will save the Dems, that will then be applicable to taking on McCain, how much sooner the healing process will be able to begin.
The mainstream media will hate it. They will lose hundreds of millions in advertising. They will lose their cheap, easy political news feed.
The democratic congress may not like it either. The political frenzy has kept the light off of their failures, off the blue dog democrats who function more like right wingers, selling out the constitution.
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