|
There is an elephant in the room.. well, more like a giant donkey.
To get the nomination before the convention, a candidate has to get over half of the delegates to be pledged to him/her.
That means that a candidate is going to have to win *over half* of the delegates in any given state or in effect, fall further away from being able to accomplish this goal.
So far, only Obama has won over half the delegates in any given state, his "rout" in SC. There, he gained 2 delegates over the half he needed to get just to stay even with the game.
So far, not counting super-delegates, there have been 137 delegates granted. Of these, one would need 69 delegates to meet the goal of half of the delegates. Obama has 63, still 6 delegates short of "holding his own" in a path to a non-brokered convention.
We sit here, and piss each other off because of this race. Should Florida count? I don't know, because I haven't seen the results, but I doubt that Clinton would have gotten 50% of the delegates, had they been awarded. The result? If Florida were to count, Clinton would be further away from her goal of getting half the delegates. Obama and Edwards would be even further away.
Unless someone drops out, and I doubt that they will, no one will have a majority of the delegates pledged from the primaries and caucuses. The real battle will be super-delegates, and our candidate will probably have to make a lot of promises, each of them deemed unsavory promises by those who do not support that candidate.
Our arguments keep changing to suit our needs. Some people count states won, when convenient, some people count delegates won (again, when convenient) and others count actual votes, some pledged + super-delegates (yadda yadda yadda).
We need to start realizing at how much further away each primary results put our candidate away from their goal, to get a majority of the delegates. I don't think the primary voters/caucus goers themselves will grant a majority to any candidate. Even if they do, they can be slapped down by the will of the super-delegates.
The long and short, any candidate is going to have to make compromises to get the nomination. Constant pissing on your opponent's supporters at this point of the game is going to make that point in time very distasteful for most of us.
|