Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Bern It Down

With wins in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico over the weekend, the AP has declared that Mrs. Clinton has secured the Democratic nomination. This seems slightly premature to me. Although she will be the nominee barring some major catastrophe, it would have seemed slightly more prudent to wait and declare her the nominee tonight rather than the day before six states go to the polls. It smacks a bit of attempting to defuse a potential win by Mr. Sanders in California of it's power.

Mrs. Clinton currently has 1811 pledged delegates while Mr. Sanders has 1526. It is mathematically impossible for Mr. Sanders to get to the needed 2383 even if he won all 714 remaining pledged delegates. Likewise, Mrs. Clinton would have to win 80% of the remaining pledged delegates to clinch outright, something that is nearly impossible in the proportional allotment of the Democratic Primary process. So we must move on to the Superdelegates.

The AP is currently reporting that Mrs. Clinton has the support of as many as 571 Superdelegates. There is also a dispute regarding one of the pledged delegates from the Virgin Islands. If you give her this delegate and all 571, she hits 2383 exactly. The two problems of course are that there is a dispute regarding this one delegate and that she needs the firm support of all 571 Superdelegates who have talked about her. Given that Mrs. Clinton is likely to take between 300 and 400 pledged delegates tonight, why the sudden rush to declare her the nominee?

My suspicion is that there are elements within the Democratic Party that are generally worried that Mrs. Clinton will have a poor optical showing tonight. It is possible that of the six contests tonight, she may only win New Jersey. No one will really care who wins the Dakotas, Montana and New Mexico, but if Mr. Sanders takes them and wins California, it will make Mrs. Clinton look weak as she should be in the process of finishing off Mr. Sanders much as Mr. Trump was doing to Mr. Cruz.

This is still mostly optics though. Mrs. Clinton will be coming in to the convention with over 2100 pledged delegates and a likely 300+ delegate lead over Mr. Sanders. She will also have won at least 30 of the 58 contests giving her the majority of wins there. Although she will likely only need less than 300 Superdelegates to put her over the top, she will have probably better than 600. So there is no question that she has more support among the Democratic Party and is deserving of the nomination this time around.

Still, Mr. Sanders' supporters are not exactly known for rationality. A win in the Democratic stronghold of California coupled with wins in smaller states will give them the feeling that the momentum of the people is on their side and that, as it will take Superdelegates to finish the thing off, they should have as much right to make their claim heard.

Things might have been handled a bit better if all the Superdelegates simply kept their mouths shut about who they planned to support until the primaries were over, but I imagine that even then Mr. Sanders supporters would have taken the line that the party apparatchiks were stepping in to push Mrs. Clinton over the top, despite the fact that that's exactly what they would be doing if they flipped and gave Mr. Sanders the nomination.

I still think there was a misstep yesterday in declaring Mrs. Clinton the nominee. Even if the optics are less than ideal, it would have seemed less dodgy to have Mrs. Clinton officially proclaimed as the presumptive nominee following her win in New Jersey, giving her a three contest win streak and then writing off any losses as irrelevant, but with people having cast votes. Declaring votes irrelevant prior to being cast will play into the fever dream of Mr. Sanders' supporters that the party is burying their candidate despite the "will of the people"; contrary to reality though.

Either way, expect some nastiness in Philadelphia. I doubt it will be 1968 levels, but I also don't expect Mr. Sanders or his supports to concede gracefully as Mrs. Clinton did when bested by Mr. Obama in 2008. Maybe cooler heads will prevail by the time the convention rolls around at the end of July, but I'm skeptical at the moment.