Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Congratulations Obama (or - why isn't this over?)

Let me make a bold statement. Obama has won the Democratic nomination. With his latest wins in Mississippi and the Texas Caucasus, Obama now has (ignoring "superdelegates") 161 more delegates than Hillary Clinton. The number of delegates at stake in Pennsylvania is 188 -- so Hillary Clinton would have to win almost 100% of the vote to pull ahead of Obama. That is not going to happen. Even if Clinton has a two digit lead (and polls do show her as ahead in that state) she is unlikely to close the gap by more than 50 delegates, leaving Obama with a comfortable 100 delegate lead of Clinton going into the convention.

No wonder the Clinton camp would like to bring Florida and Michigan back into the fold. And how stupid it was of the Democratic party to try and disenfranchise these voters! But any attempt to take the results of the February primaries and apply them to the current situation will be as severe a miscarriage of our representative democratic process as if the super delegates were allowed to chose the Democratic party nominee.

There are only two options now for the DNC -- award the nomination to Obama or rerun the primaries in those two states. How terrible for our nation that we will waste $30 million on this exercise. Michigan, by the way is 156 delegates and Florida is 210. So if you combine those two with the 188 in Pennsylvania, there are a total of 554 delegates at stake. Clinton would have to win 162 more than Obama. As close as each of these races has been, do YOU think you would win that many more? Is this worth $30 million that could be used for education in our public schools?