Here's the flaw in the super delegate argument by Sanders:

[MineralMan]

Hillary Clinton current has 1770 pledged delegates. To gain the 2026 pledged delegates she needs to have a majority of pledged delegates, she needs only 256 additional pledged delegates.

In the remaining primaries there are 781 delegates left to be allocated. 256 of those is roughly 33% of 781. In order for Bernie Sanders to prevent her getting those 256 delegates, he will need to win 67% of the vote across all of those remaining primaries.

Here's the problem: Just in California, 475 pledged delegates are at stake. If California is tied, she'll get 237 of the 256 she needs. It is impossible that Bernie will win California by a 2/3 margin. That simply will not happen.

New Jersey is likely to be a solid win for her, as is DC. She'll split the vote in the other states by some ratio. But, in each, she will get additional delegates to add to her total.

Hillary Clinton WILL have the majority of the pledged delegates as of June 8. There's almost no way that doesn't happen.

So, there's the super delegate dilemma. Bernie Sanders will not get the majority of pledged delegates. That's going to be impossible, due to the Democratic Party's proportional allocation of delegates. The super delegates will not flip to the candidate with a minority of pledged delegates in numbers large enough to push Bernie over the top at the convention. They are long-time Democratic elected officials and party leaders. They have relationships with and loyalties to Clinton that will not be overcome by any candidate with a minority of pledged delegates. That simply will not happen.

Just for grins, let's assume that Hillary ends up with just 2026 pledged delegates, the minimum number for a majority. To win at the convention, she will need only 2383 total votes. To get there, she'd need just 357 of the super delegate's votes, out of 714. There is not a chance in Hell that she will get less than that if she has the majority of pledged delegates. Not a chance.

It's a party thing. The super delegates are Democratic Party loyalists.

The reality is that Hillary will have more than the minimum majority of pledged delegates. How many more, we will know on June 14. The reality is that she already has 520 super delegates who have indicated that they plan to vote for Hillary. Bernie's dream is not going to come true. There's no way for it to come true. It won't happen.

Sorry, folks.

[anotherproletariat]

1. While this has been obvious for months, it's good to repeat often so that people realize that there

are not any games being played, it's how the Democratic nomination works.

[Garrett78]

4. Yeah, it's standard operating procedure.

Last edited Sun May 29, 2016, 02:52 PM - Edit history (1)

It seems some have already forgotten what took place just 8 years ago.

Such as Clinton having early support of superdelegates only to see superdelegates switch in accordance with who ended up with more pledged delegates (even though the margin was smaller then than it is this year). They won't switch this year, but the point is that superdelegates expressing support early on is nothing new.

Such as Obama losing a majority of the primaries down the stretch but winning the nomination anyway, before going on to win the presidency in an electoral college landslide. Clinton is following the same path.

Such as Obama being widely considered the presumptive nominee even though he didn't have the "magic number" of delegates. Just as Clinton will be.

[MohRokTah]

19. I beg to differ. There are some Super Delegates who WILL be switching.

Senator Jeff Merkley is most notably one who will switch. I suspect he'll give Sanders a few days to concede and endorse, but Merkley is smart and he will switch, even if Sanders goes off the deep end, ends up stupid, and proclaims he is taking it to the first vote in the convention. Merkley WILL SWITCH BEFORE JUNE 25. That's more than a week after the last primary in D.C. and I guarantee you he will not ruin his career by failing to switch to Clinton prior to that date.

[Garrett78]

20. Fair point.

I guess I'm just trying to get across the point that superdelegates don't determine the outcome so much as honor the outcome, as they did in 2008.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Democratic Party Loyalists should be concerned about the welfare of the party

not being loyal to ONE personality who has become so toxic with her unfavorables, to
the point where she's likely to not win the GE.

[MineralMan]

5. Claiming that Clinton is unlikely to win the GE

is just a judgment call. Claiming that Sanders would win is equally a judgment call. Personally, I judge that Clinton would have a better chance in November. Sanders is vulnerable on many grounds as well and would struggle to get a majority, I believe. Clinton will have to struggle less, and will pick up many votes from the "never Trump" Republicans, along with some financial support from the other side.

Trump has no plan for the nation. That will become increasingly obvious during the General Election campaign. Clinton does have a plan, and it's much like Obama's plan, which has led him through two terms of being elected easily to the office.

Those party loyalists are also experienced politicians and politician-makers. They have a superior understanding of political reality than most of us who are really only voters and blabbers about politics. Their judgment, too, is that Hillary has a better chance of winning and a better chance of helping those who are elected to win, too.

You feel differently. I don't have any way to judge your expertise in political prognostication, though. Neither of us matters in the decisions of the super delegates, though. We don't have that kind of influence. They will decide, based on their own judgment.

[99th_Monkey]

7. You are correct on all points.

Thank you for your thoughtful & respectful reply. Very refreshing.

It does come down to a making judgement-call, often without adequate or accurate
information. I just hope the Supers have their crystal balls finely tuned and their
sound judgments honed, so they make the very best decision for the party and for
the nation.

[MineralMan]

9. Thank you. That's the problem with national politics, really.

It's a crap shoot. Until elections are over and administrations have been in place for some time, it's really impossible to predict outcomes accurately. I sure can't, except to keep in mind that we tend to do better with Democratic administrations than Republican ones. We vote and we take our chances to a pretty large degree.

Once again, we're rolling the dice. Thanks for looking at what I wrote with an open mind.

[pangaia]

12. I seriusly doubt these super dupers are doing anything for the 'party' Or the nation.

Whatever they do will be looking our for themselves.

[MineralMan]

16. I actually know a couple of them.

One's a House Member and the other's a Senator. Neither does anything for their own benefit. They are outstanding elected officials with the interests of their constituents as their highest priorities. Betty McCollum and Al Franken. Our other Senator, Amy Klobuchar is the same way, but I don't know her except from her actions.

How many super delegates do you know?

Tell me who they are and what motivates them, OK. I'll just wait here for your answer.

[pangaia]

17. Bravo for them, for sure, but I would guess those folks are amongst the minority.

I don't know any, but have been around a loooong tome, as I suspect you have...

That's my answer, so you won't have to wait any longer.

[CrowCityDem]

8. They are. Overturning the results would be a disaster, morally and demographically.

[Gothmog]

3. The math is clear here

[MineralMan]

6. It truly is. It has been clear all along, but as we near

the end of the primary season, the numbers are easier to understand at this point. With so few primaries remaining, we can look more closely at probabilities and see the actual paths.

[Garrett78]

10. Yeah, some point to March 1st and others say March 15th, but it's been clear for months...

...that Clinton will end up with more pledged delegates (by a healthy margin). Not because those of us who made that case had a crystal ball, but because basic math and demographic realities were plain to see.

[MineralMan]

11. Well, I started watching charts, ect., very early on.

Once Hillary got better results than the target goals, state after state, always staying above the 100% mark and never wavering, the course was clear. She's still at 108% of her targets, and Bernie's still at 92% Those numbers have been static for a long time. They will probably still be the numbers on June 15, too.

Oh, well. Sanders did far better than I ever expected, but he started out too far behind to win. He never caught up, but just stayed about the same distance behind Hillary, percentage-wise. Whether you look at popular vote count or pledged delegate count, the race has had a constant, continuing lead for Clinton.

[Garrett78]

13. He has done better than I expected, as well.

But replace caucuses with primaries and this isn't a remotely close contest.

[Tom Rinaldo]

14. The Super Delegates mostly reflect the Clinton constiuency in all regards

They mostly have deep ties to the institutional Democratic Party, tend to be moderately left of center, many have financial connections to the same interests that Hillary has ties to, women and minorities are very well represented among them, and younger voters not so much. But even if they seemed more like the voters who back Sanders, it would be hard to give the nomination to a candidate who trailed in pledged delegates. As you note it is hard to imagine matters turning strongly enough, quickly enough, against Clinton in the next few days to deny her a lead in pledged delegates. So unless the political universe shifts quite dramatically, the nomination is hers.

But that is also why all the preemptive expressed outrage from Clinton supporters (like Markos Moulitsas) about "How dare Super Delegates even think about taking the nomination way from Hillary under any circumstances - it would disenfranchise women, it would disenfranchise minorities!" etc. is such nonsense. If Super Delegates pulled back support from Hillary at the Convention they would in effect be disenfranchising themselves. That ain't very likely to happen, but if it somehow did, it would only happen because the world was looking a whole lot different in July than it does right now. If THAT group of Super Delegates decided to turn against Hillary it would only be because her campaign was essentially flat lining and on life support. And were that to be the case come July, they would be correct to, no doubt very reluctantly, pull the plug. I'll back Hillary in the fall if I have to, and I think I do, but if hundreds of her own Super Delegates decide that she can not get elected, don't blame Sanders supporters for staging any Coups.

[thesquanderer]

15. re: "There's almost no way that doesn't happen."

True. But that "almost" is what supporters are hanging their hopes on.

The other remote possibility is that Hillary encounters enough more negative fallout over the emails between now and the convention (like a damning FBI report) that supers consider switching to Bernie for fear that Hillary is a weak choice for November, which could theoretically happen even if he is behind in pledged delegates, though the further behind he is, the less appealing that choice is as well, which may also play into fighting for every remaining delegate even if he has almost no chance of overtaking her.

[Garrett78]

18. Even in that scenario, I don't think Sanders would be nominated.

It would be a brokered convention with enough superdelegates abstaining that nobody reaches 2383. And then someone who hasn't been running (such as Biden) would be nominated.

As unlikely as that is, it's more probable than Sanders being nominated.

[thesquanderer]

21. Good point... defection could require the SDs to make TWO decisions...

...one being to withdraw their support from Hillary if they fear she is too damaged to be a good bet for November; and then further deciding to switch to Bernie. If abstaining is an equally viable alternative (to get to some other candidate on a subsequent ballot), then that may be one bridge further to cross. But boy would that tick off a whole bunch of Bernie supporters, if they maneuvered to instead give the nomination to someone who didn't even run. That's not a strategy without its risks either. That kind of thing didn't work out so well in 1968.

[BootinUp]

22. Read it and weep CLinton haters, BoBs, CT'ers, etc. nt

[Gothmog]

23. Yes, Clinton is winning the popular vote — by a wide margin

Shaun King's claim that Clinton is not leading in the popular vote is simply wrong https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/19/yes-hillary-clinton-is-winning-the-popular-vote-by-a-wide-margin/

The idea that the popular vote totals are flawed because caucuses aren't included has been floating around for a while. The point of questioning the sum is obvious: To question the extent to which Democratic voters (and independents voting in Democratic contests, who usually favor Sanders) have preferred Clinton as the party's nominee.

This has been floating around so long, in fact, The Post's fact-checkers looked at this issue at the beginning of April. Did Clinton at that point actually lead by 2.5 million votes, as she claimed? No, she didn't.

She led by 2.4 million votes.

The Post's Glenn Kessler arrived at that figure by taking estimates of how many people came out to vote in caucus contests and applying the final vote margin to that population. This is admittedly imprecise, as King notes, since in some caucuses (like Iowa's) voter preferences can and do change. Kessler's total included Washington, despite King's insistence -- and in Washington, he figured that Sanders had the support of 167,201 voters to Clinton's 62,330. Despite that, still a 2.4 million advantage for Clinton.

It's worth noting that caucuses, for which it's harder to calculate vote totals, are usually in smaller states and/or have smaller turnout. King's concern about ensuring Alaska's huge Democratic voting base is included in the tally is answered by Kessler's math.

What's more, Kessler continued updating his tally as results came in. The most recent update was after the contests on April 27, at which point her wins in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Northeastern states had extended her lead to "just over 3 million votes" -- including his estimates for the caucuses. (By my tabulation of Kessler's numbers, it's 3.03 million.)

Since then, there have been five contests.

Indiana. Sanders won with 32,152 more votes.
Guam. Clinton won with 249 more votes.
West Virginia. Sanders won with 30,509 more votes.
Kentucky. Clinton won with 1,924 more votes (per the latest AP count).
Oregon. Sanders won with 69,007 more votes (per AP).

In total, then, Clinton's lead over Sanders in the popular vote is 2.9 million. The difference isn't because the total excludes Washington. It's because it includes more recent contests from the past 14 days.

That number will continue to change. There are only two big states left -- New Jersey and California -- both of which vote June 7. Clinton leads by a wide margin in New Jersey, where more than a million people turned out in 2008. She has a smaller lead in California, where about 5 million voted in the Democratic primary eight years ago. For Sanders to pass Clinton in the popular vote, he would need turnout like 2008 in California -- and to win by 57 points.

Clinton is only up on Sanders by 2.9 million votes and that is a real number