I’ve been talking to a friend of mine online and I explained everything succinctly to her in the span of about half an hour, and I think maybe there’s so much to this primary that people aren’t really understanding, so maybe a quick run down in my own words might help some folks understand this a little better as I half watch more pundits on MSNBC.

First of all, I’ll acknowledge a few things…

1) I’m no expert at this crap. I just watch at least an hour of MSNBC a day, sometimes more, so I’m just a bit more intelligent of a parrot.

2) I’m a liberal Democrat and I do support Obama, and I make this bias known and acknowledge it. I’m trying to be unbiased in this as I present what’s below, but understand that when I mention Clinton/Obama below? I’m not trying to slam one candidate or another.

3) This by no means is a definitive guide. I think its a good start to help explain it a little better… Or I hope…

So, let’s begin.

Delegates and superdelegates are the first big issue. Delegate numbers are assigned to the state. Then, the popular vote is figured out in the state (caucus or primary, we can explain those later). Delegates are then awarded proportionately to each person based on the popular vote. These delegates as people are then determined by the democratic parties and each candidate’s groups. These are the pledged delegates. These delegates are folks who are usually so set in their candidates that you’re not going to move them.

Now, what about the superdelegates? These are folks who are party elders, Democrats in Congress, Governors, former Presidents, and other party leaders. They don’t have to vote the way that their constituents vote or the way that their state votes as a whole (because you could have constituents in a county vote one way and the state as a whole another, of course). These folks vote the way that they want and the way that they feel best. Sometimes its for political reasons, sometimes its because they believe in the candidate. You can decide as a whole how you think it really is.

And the question this go round that Clinton has raised is how should these superdelegates vote? Clinton has said that they should vote based off of the leader of popular vote. the “must-win states,” or their conscience of who’s “electable.” Obama has said that they should consider the will of their delegates or the will of the people as a whole. And if I got that part wrong, well, the honest truth is this: the superdelegates vote as they think is best. And also to remember, just because they endorse a candidate now doesn’t mean they’ll vote for them at the final vote at the convention. It means they should, but still.

Next up, what happened with Florida and Michigan? There’s a long answer that you could read into, but here’s a good simplified version of it all. Iowa and New Hampshire always have the first two primaries and the early ones. There’s a lot of money for any state that moves their primaries up. The schedule was set for all states and they were told that if they moved up their primaries, they would face penalties from the Democratic National Committee. This was something agreed on by both parties and signed upon by all of the candidates. All of the candidates signed a “no-campaign” sheet, acknowledging that these two states would not be seated at the convention. At the same time too, Obama was not on the Michigan ballot. So, when the folks did vote in Florida and Michigan, Clinton won both states. Now, in the aftermath of everything, Clinton is trying to move for these two states to be seated to boost her numbers. Please understand that this is an argument for completely later…

Now, moving on… why are North Carolina and Indiana so important? After today, the majority of the delegates to be awarded come from that superdelegate number. Also, today the largest number of delegates for any one day remaining are divided out: 187 (72 for Indiana and 115 for North Carolina). There are three outcomes of tonight and here’s how they all read politically:

1) Obama wins both: If this happens, the appeal could be made that he’s won the most contests, the most delegates, and is ready for the nomination. It almost completely seals the delegate math against Clinton and makes it hard for her to really claim to have much of a continued stake in the race. This would probably have more superdelegates would declaring their support for Obama within the next week or two.

2) Clinton wins both: If this happens, Clinton has struck back strong and it shows that the electorate is wavering. It shows that people aren’t set fully behind Obama and that they might be having second thoughts, and that Pennsylvania strengthened her campaign. With this result, superdelegates might start coming out for Clinton, but more than likely might be quiet through till about June 4th.

3) Each candidate wins one: This is probably the most likely result from tonight with Clinton winning Indiana and Obama winning North Carolina. If this happens, the Democratic race remains the way its sitting and noone really advances in the superdelegates’ eyes. And then we just have to see.

Two things to remember with that: (1) Even in winning a state, if Obama or Clinton wins by a 55%-45% on the popular vote, they’ll only get that 55% of the delegates; (2) After today there are more superdelegates that are undeclared than pledged delegates that could be awarded to either campaign in the upcoming states (West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota). That means that in those states coming up, there won’t be as much “concern” as we’ve seen in the past. We’ll still see it, but most of the campaigning will be calls to superdelegates. Just keep both of those in mind, and I hope I didn’t lose you on it.

And if you’re still with me? Okay, the last really big thing comes with the important Democratic Primary dates ahead:

1) May 31st: On this day, the Democratic National Committee meets to see how to deal with Florida and Michigan. The outcomes on this day will be interesting. There probably will not be a solution that both candidates will be happy with, but we will just have to see.

2) June 4th: On this day, we would have had the last primaries the day before and there’ll be no more pledged delegates to be awarded (pending the DNC decision on Florida and Michigan). There should be a lot more superdelegates endorsing then and as a whole, there should be a presumptive candidate. That presumes, of course, that there was resolution on May 31st to Michigan and Florida.

3) August 25th-28th: The Democratic National Convention, which will determine who the actual candidate/ticket is.

And I hope that clears things up. When you turn on the news and you hear dates, candidates, delegates, superdelegates, Rev. Wright, gas tax holidays, Florida, Michigan, “elite,” and tons of other of the buzzwords, its sort of hard to sort things out for one side or the other.

Anyways, let me know if that helps, and if it does, please feel free to pass it along to others. It’ll help you read the paper and understand a little more for the water cooler in the morning, I’d imagine. And if not? Feel free to ask…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm by Adam and is filed under Political Musings, Writings/Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.