Countdown to Obama's victory

Barack Obama needs 25 superdelegate endorsements today and tomorrow -- maybe a few less than that, depending on his Montana and South Dakota margins -- to clinch an outright delegate majority in time for his St. Paul victory speech tomorrow night.

Can he do it? As of this writing, he's gotten two today, so he needs 23 more. Check this link or Halperin for updates throughout the day, as I'm sure there will be more endorsements. Also keep in mind, it isn't the "net" that matters, but the absolute number for Obama.

One key question is when the "Pelosi club" superdelegates, who've said they'll endorse the pledged-delegate winner, will specifically announce for Obama, who has already secured the pledged-delegate majority.

As for those in the alternate Hillaryland reality who want to trump the pesky delegate count by relying on a fundamentally flawed, inherently illegitimate, hotly disputed, and at best extremely narrow "popular vote" victory, here's a handy popular vote scenario tester, where you answer various questions about how the vote should be counted, and the tally updates automatically. There are a grand total of 972 possible scenarios. :)

P.S. Baltimore Sun columnist Paul Rogat Loeb makes an excellent point about Hillary's phony "popular vote" claims:

Given the bitterness of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace the story that "a man took it away from a woman," denying her a victory she deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Mrs. Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has recently spoken about the need for the party to come together. ...

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever cease-fire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

P.P.S. On a barely related note, Politico quotes a Clinton aide as stating, "It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it's one of the most important primaries in this process." Hmm, does that make Matt Drudge a super-duper delegate?

UPDATE: Obama is definitely hoping to clinch tomorrow:

Looking to bring finality to the Democratic presidential campaign, Barack Obama worked furiously Monday to win over enough superdelegates to clinch the nomination with the final primaries Tuesday.

Obama wants to formally kick off his general election campaign against Republican John McCain in a victory speech Tuesday night as the final primary campaign polls close in South Dakota and Montana.

"Senator Obama is trying to line up people that are going to come out for him tomorrow during the day so that he'll have enough that puts him over the top that he can declare victory tomorrow," said Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire, one of about 200 superdelegates under pressure to take a side in the contest.

For what it's worth, the polls close at 8:00 PM EDT in eastern South Dakota, 9:00 PM in western South Dakota, and 10:00 PM in Montana. Obama's rally in St. Paul is scheduled to begin at 9:00 PM EDT, but I assume he won't be speaking until sometime after 10:00. (Montana is expected to be a landslide, so it'll probably be possible to declare it for Obama -- and award him 9 delegates right off the bat -- immediately after the polls close. [UPDATE: Or maybe not?])

Oh, and about those superdelegates: 15 of them, all U.S. Senators, are meeting this afternoon to decide what to do. I imagine a mass Tuesday-morning endorsement by the remaining undeclared senators could go along way toward bringing a few more supers along and putting Obama over the top by 10:00 PM tomorrow.

Comments

[I R A Darth Aggie]

"It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it's one of the most important primaries in this process." Hmm, does that make Matt Drudge a super-duper delegate?

No, it's the Drudge Primary, which makes him the 58th state.

[Brendan]

Heh!

[Jim]

Is this the scandal Hillary has been waiting for?

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Drink-Kool-Aid-Oprah-Occult/dp/1434894711

I think Hillary's problem is that she's already absorbed a critical mass of gullible people. There are none left to help push her over the edge.

[Mad Max, Esquire]

Now that Hillary is pretty much out of it, you are starting to hear stories of Bill and his "pussy posse" running around the globe, hooking him up with available local hotties.

Whatever crap may come Obama's way, I guarantee you it will pale in comparison to the stories you would have heard about Bill Clinton's international sex-capades. The guy couldn't keep it in his pants with a fatty in the White House during a blizzard. Can you imagine what he's been doing on his trips to Brazil during Carnival???

[Ed]

Brendan - are you on record as saying a fair compilation of the votes puts HRC approx. 45K behind? If not, what IS a fair compilation?

Now, did not a plurality of Dem voters say that the Supers should go to the candidate who attained the most votes? What if she manages to eliminate that gap, or otherwise demonstrates fairly that she has actually attained the most votes?

I submit that the vast majority of the folks who responded to the question this way were being disingenuous as hell. If they were true to this principle, we would be reading far more about demands that the supers cease pledging for either candidate until the final tally is performed.

Where are these cries from non-HRC supporters? Seems to me they care more that things be settled, rather than the principle of a democratic process.

Where do you stand? Do you grant my point, or just dismiss it as an impossible scenario?

[Jim]

In what scenario do you see her getting an indisputable majority of voters?

[Brendan]

Ed, I'm on record, repeatedly, as saying that the popular vote is an illegitimate and inherently flawed way of ascertaining anything whatsoever. Therefore, my answer to your question -- "If not, what IS a fair compilation?" -- is, "Nothing. There is no such thing."

This Jed Report post does a pretty good job explaining why, though I could add another half-dozen reasons if I really wanted to take the time.

The fact that most voters don't agree, and think the "popular vote" should reign supreme, is simply a sign of most voters' ignorance of the process. Most voters aren't aware of the pertinent facts necessary to make a rational judgment about the proper measures of legitimacy. They are, for instance, unaware that four caucus states don't even tally popular votes (because, why should they? POPULAR VOTE DOESN'T MATTER!); they haven't considered that, if popular vote was the metric that mattered, nobody would hold caucuses because to do so would be to voluntarily disenfranchise one's own state; they haven't thought about the implications of the differences between open, closed, semi-open, and semi-closed primaries, and how adding together these different types of elections MAKES NO SENSE; etc. etc. etc. Most voters simply say "count the popular vote!" because it feels good to say that. "One person, one vote! Democracy! Lalala!" They don't have a God-damn clue what they're talking about.

Bottom line, I don't give a crap what the average voter thinks the process is. The process is what it is; it isn't what the average voter thinks it is. And the Democrats have a delegate-allocation process, not a popular-vote-tallying process.

(And, yes, the superdelegates are a legitimate part of the process for determining the nominee, and if they want to overturn the result of the primaries and caucuses, they have every right to do so. However, let there be no mistaking what "the result of the primaries and caucuses" is. It's whoever wins the pledged delegate count, not whoever wins some mythical, nonexistent, phony "popular vote" tally.)

You want me to concede the point because of what the polls say the average voter believes? Get real. The average voter probably also thinks the Electoral College should automatically pick the popular vote winner; do you concede that point, Ed?

My notions of legitimacy are determined by logic and knowledge, not by opinion polls. And logic and knowledge tell me that the popular vote is -- as I said in this very post -- a fundamentally flawed, intrinsically illegitimate metric for declaring a "winner."

That said, I've been willing to indulge in the Clintonian fantasy of concocting a "national popular vote," even though it's a futile, hopeless, and ultimately pointless and deceptive exercise, if for no other reason than that it's interesting and is pretty much the only thing left to really talk about, in a contest that's otherwise been effectively over for weeks, if not months. And so I've invented the concept of the "arguably plausible" count -- i.e., the count that Hillary can make at least a halfway-decent argument for, as opposed to the counts that are facially ridiculous, undemocratic and fraudulent on their face.

Even as I've talked about the "arguably plausible" ways of counting the "popular vote," I've repeatedly reiterated that I think the whole exercise is illegitimate -- there's no such thing as a "good count" or a "right count" because the purpose of this process is not to count popular votes, and if it was, the whole process would be utterly, completely, profoundly different in innumerable ways that would utterly change the nature of the race.

However, while there is no such thing as a "good count," I have nevertheless argued for the use of a count that is "less bad," if you will, than the utterly ridiculous ones Hillary has been using (giving herself a Soviet-style victory in Michigan, disenfranchising whole states without acknowledging that she's doing so and indeed while explicitly arguing for a "50-state count," etc.)

And in that count -- in the most Clinton-friendly "less bad" count -- yes, Obama is leading by 45,000. And he will not relinquish that lead. There is absolutely no way, in any version of reality, that Hillary will win South Dakota and Montana by 45,000 votes. The raw number of voters will be way too low to produce any such result, even if Hillary were to somehow win those states, which she won't, let alone by the landslide she'd need. It is simply Not. Gonna. Happen.

Does that answer your questions?

[Sandy Underpants]

The only person who's been inconsistent (as is typical) is Hillary Clinton. The supers are not beholden to vote in any particular fashion. Some have said that they will vote as their state voted, and others have said they will vote for whomever has the most delegates, and of course others are just going to vote for who they prefer without regard to voters wishes.

Obama has the most delegates and the rules state that the person with the most delegates wins in the end. Those have been the rules for hundreds of years, I can't see changing them because Hillary will lose if we follow them.

I have to say that I'm really dissapointed to see people still voting for Hillary, for the life of me I can't see anything admirable or respectable about her anymore, and I would not have said that 6 months ago, even though she was never my preference.

[Ed]

Thank you for such a thorough and forthright post/response, Brendan!

My post had two purposes. 1) get you on record regarding the vote count, and 2) exposing the mendacity of the professionals, and the hypocrisy of the average Democrat who supported this meme.

I don't remember you so forcibly asserting the Supers rights and privileges before. It seems to me most of your posts were about HRC's shenanigans (polite word) and that it would be wrong if BHO wasn't the nominee. Forgive me if I inferred incorrectly. So....if the Supers decided that BHO is too radioactive to win the general and anointed HRC the nominee, you would support their rights, right? You'll tell everyone that this was a legitimate exercise of legitimate party power, right?

I must say, however, I didn't expect such a Hamiltonian philosophy in your reply to me. Good on ya, Brendan!

[Jim]

Supers have the right to vote however they want, but can (and should) face the wrath of voters if they overturn the pledged delegates.

[David K.]

and the hypocrisy of the average Democrat who supported this meme.

I think Brendan rightly counters your above assertion. The "average Democrat" you are reffering to is largely unclear on the actual process and truly believes that popular vote should matter. I don't even think you could describe them as teh average democrat given a large segement of non-Democrats who participated in and voted for and are supporting Hillary in this push for their own partisan reasons.

On the second part of your question directed at Brendan, my opinion is that the super delegates over-ridding the pledged delegates is ALLOWED by the system, but I still don't think it would be right. I would not cry foul if they did so other than that I think they are making the wrong choice for a number of reasons, both practical and ideological.

[Brendan]

I don't remember you so forcibly asserting the Supers rights and privileges before.

I may not have done so before. However, I haven't said the contrary, either... at least not since sometime way back in January or February, when I had barely thought this issue through. My recent posts all relate to the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of Hillary's vote count, not to the separate question of the legitimacy of the supers as an aspect of the process.

So....if the Supers decided that BHO is too radioactive to win the general and anointed HRC the nominee, you would support their rights, right? You'll tell everyone that this was a legitimate exercise of legitimate party power, right?

Legitimate under the rules, yes. A wise application of those rules to the present facts, no.

My belief is that the purpose of the supers is to provide a moderating influence to, er, correct the will of the people, in the event that a candidate is totally unacceptable and/or obviously unelectable. By any objective criteria, Barack Obama does not, at present, fit that criteria. Despite what Rush Limbaugh & co. might say (or, um, gulp, Joe Lieberman, for that matter, ahem), he isn't some sort of crazed socialist lunatic, nor is he polling with McGovern/Goldwater type numbers. Therefore, if the supers were to do what you propose, I would state that they are making an egregiously unwise choice in overturning the choice of the electorate for no good reason, other than their own barely-educated hunch about electability. I would regard their action as an abuse of the spirit of the process, though not a violation of the process itself.

However, I would acknowledge the procedural legitimacy of what they are doing. They would have the right to do it, but it would still be the wrong thing to do. (This distinction is similar to the notion that, for example, we all have the right to say whatever we want, because of the First Amendment, but it's still wrong to say vile racist/sexist/etc. things.)

I probably would avoid the word "illegitimate" unless the supers' decision was clearly premised on factually fradulent grounds that are themselves illegitimate. For example, if the decisive superdelegate(s) were to issue a statement which says, "We're going to pick Clinton over Obama because she won the popular vote," my head would obviously explode, and I would jump up and down screaming about all the myriad reasons why that's a totally absurd and illegitimate criteria to ascertain the popular will, or the "winner of the primaries and caucuses" as I said earlier. If, on the other hand, the statement said, "We're going to pick Clinton because she's more electable," I'd still disagree and would think that they're doing the wrong thing because the evidence of Obama's unelectability isn't nearly strong enough to meet the high moral burden that I believe Obama's victory in the primaries & caucuses imposes on anyone wishing to overturn that victory -- but I'd be less apoplectic, and would not regard their argument as facially absurd and utterly contemptible. It'd just be run-of-the-mill wrong.

However, leaving aside the question of their rationale and its intellectual legitimacy or soundness, again, I would certainly acknowledge the procedural legitimacy of the superdelegates' right to overturn the result of the primaries and caucuses (which, I reiterate, is ascertained by counting pledged delegates, not popular votes). But I would also be very clear that that's what they're doing: overturning the result of the primaries and caucuses. And, as I say, I think they'd better have a damn good reason if they're going to do that.

Okay, I'm repeating myself now, so I'll stop. :) Basically, I agree with what Jim said.

[copndor]

"Delegate" is not the word I would put after "Super Duper."

[JT]

Once again, McCain takes Obama's comment that he would meet with Iranian leadership and incorrectly equates that to a meeting with President Ahmadinejad when the real power in Iran is actually held by the Supreme Leader. It would be nice to see the press call him out on his ignorance. Here's his quote below:

“We hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were some sudden inspiration, a bold new idea that somehow nobody has ever thought of before,” Mr. McCain said at the pro-
Israel lobby’s convention in Washington. “Yet it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another.”

[Alasdair]

JT - out of curiosity, do you believe that President Ahmadinejad is *not* part of the Iranian leadership ?

Cuz most of us think of him as part of that group ...

[David K.]

Alasdair, your past history of who you think belongs in which group has allready proven to be laughable at best...

[Sandy Underpants]

You can't really follow the mainstream media and expect to be informed these days. Research it and you'll find that the Ahmidoucheibag has no involvement in foreign relations or military. That doesn't fit well with the storyline that Iran is an unstable, chaotic, militant threat. The Supreme Leader makes those decisions and if you don't know who he is, or what he looks like, it's because he's well thought out, reserved, and well spoken and that doesn't go along with the American storyline that we really need to bomb Iran before our own beloved supreme leader crawls out of office in 7 months, a complete failure.

[Ed]

Brendan - we can agree to disagree as to electability. I think HRC is far more electable due to her marginally more moderate political philosophy, and also to unfortunate latent prejudices (see WV and KY). I think she'd get 5-10 points more than BHO would.

I do take issue with your assertion that the people have voted BHO the victor. He won a plurality, not a majority. HRC is right there in delegate count, and vote count. I honestly don;t see how anyone can conclude other than that the will of the Dem voters is effectively halved. The voters simply did not make a choice. They chose not to choose.

If the Dems used a more traditional method of delegate allocation, HRC would have won a decisive majority. Basically, the meme first proferred by BHO subordinates in February that the leader in delegates necessarily should be the nominee just doesn't hold up in history. They made it up every bit as much as the HRC folks did with their popular vote meme.

David - thank you for an excellent example of the generalized disregard elite Dems have for the mind of the average man. The average Dem voter does not/can not comprehend that the primary is run much as a presidential Electoral College election? Really? You honestly wish to condescend in this manner?

[David K.]

Ed, its not condescension, and considering you were calling them hypocrites and i was merely calling them uninformed, I hardly think you have any room to talk.

As for the uninformed part, it has nothing to do with intelligence. Very few people have any reason to think about the intricacies of the electoral process. I didn't even realize that Washington's primary didn't count in the process until this election and I actually DO pay attention to the process. I knew even less about the process before meeting Brendan (and his Dad) about 10 years ago. The majority of people DON'T know because its really not that important to most of them. I also think alot of people are STILL not as aware of the Electoral College as those of us on the blog are. I'm not talking about Joe Sixpack either, i'm talking about very intelligent people a well. Its all about priorities.

I also think this is less close than you make it out to be given that the elections in two large states (FL and MI) were incredibly skewed. In addition you had a non-insignificant group of right wing voters intentionally voting for Hillary as part of Rush Scumbags "chaos" campaign.

[Alasdair]

Ed - it wasn't condescension - it was Davidianism ... (grin) ...

As a Brit now resident in the US, one of the most impressive things about the US is the foresight the Founding Fathers showed when they included such things as the Electoral College ... and it amazes me how few over here appreciate that prescient wisdom ...

[Joe Mama]

I wonder if the remaining undeclared superdelegates will be jockeying to be no. 2118 that puts Obama over the top . . .

[Brendan]

Heh. Maybe that's what Al Gore is waiting for.

Of course, the only problem is, every media organization has a slightly different superdelegate count...

[David K.]

For someone who claims to revere the wisdom of the Founding Fathers Alasdair, you sure seem ignorant on some of their founding principles, like questioning authority. If they had had the same mentality you did, you wouldn't need a green card/visa to live and work in this country, we'd still be British.