So for anyone who might have read my post yesterday about politics, I figured I’d follow it up with another one for people who are wondering what’s what.

First of all, let’s start at the beginning there.

Indiana - Clinton wins by 2% of the popular vote, roughly 20k votes
North Carolina - Obama wins by 14% of the popular vote, roughly 260k votes

So what does this mean? The key is this comes in a few things:

Popular Vote - Clinton has used this as a key argument. If you look at yesterday alone, she is down 240k votes from last night alone. Clinton has introduced the argument of including Florida and Michigan’s popular votes. The problem comes in with the fact that the caucus delegates don’t have a popular vote tied to them, so that would have to be projected and guessed. And caucuses are a discussion for another time.
Electoral Vote - As I didn’t mention yesterday, Obama was the presumptive front-runner. Depending on which news source you go to for your counts, the superdelegates electoral count shows Clinton in the lead by about 15 or so and the pledged delegates are in Obama’s favor by about 160. When you add all of that together, Obama’s about 145ish or so in the lead and at a point where he’s just under 200 delegates from the nomination point. Clinton is under 400 back from that point.
States Won - By my rough count, Obama’s won 29 states to Clinton’s 16. If I’m off, don’t shoot me. I didn’t include Guam, Virgin Islands, Americans Abroad, and other such votes, but the key to this metric is the concept of “what are states worth.” Clinton has the argument that some of the states that Obama has won are historically not Democrat won states in the election and that she won the “important states” (Texas, NY, California, etc). Then there’s talk of swing states, small states, Florida and Michigan, and it sounds like 2000 all over again.
Florida and Michigan - Just see my comment on that yesterday.

So what does that mean today? Today, there are a lot of news items to listen for.

1) “50 State Plan” - While it might seem that because Obama has this lead in electoral delegates and popular vote and states won, it would seem that superdelegates would just start flocking to him. I heard Massachusetts Democratic Party Supervisor Deborah Kozikowski talking about this point this morning. The key to this is that most superdelegates will be waiting till after all states have cast their vote and the FL/MI ordeal has been resolved. So June 4th, as I said yesterday.

2) Clinton’s Self Loan - Apparently in April, Clinton gave herself $6.4 million for her campaign. Add this to the $5 million from the other month and that’s a total of $11.4 million (hooray basic math!). That being the case, the money trail goes to Bill’s book tours and speaking engagements. Last time this was the case that she loaned herself money, donors paid her back because of all of her victories. Howard Wolfson, a chief communication officer/strategist for Clinton, has said that she’ll loan herself more money as necessary. Watch her money and you’ll see what the future will hold for her campaign.

3) Defecting Big-Wigs - While I link specifically the McGovern unendorsement of Clinton and reendorsement of Obama, because of the results from last night, he might not be the only person with a big name you hear moving one way or another. I say it like that to be non-discriminatory, but you’ll hear more of them leaving Clinton and heading to Obama. In this case, McGovern isn’t a superdelegate, but you might hear the same with some of the superdelegates, which of course will change the electoral vote counts slightly.

4) Pundits Calling It - Last night begun this, and it’ll continue on. From the ones that I’ve heard of, Tim Russert was one of the first people to declare Obama the presumptive candidate. Others that I’ve seen on the list have included union leaders too. So just start listening to what is said by who. While the remaining states are probably pretty set in their voting ways in the way they look, well if there’s a shift in the way they’re “expected,” who knows.

5) The Convention Committees - I mentioned this yesterday, but we’re just going to have to wait. If there’s some issue with the May 31st meeting, there’s another meeting scheduled for June sometime for the FL/MI votes. This is just something to keep in mind and see what happens.

And I think that about sums up everything from last night. Its one of those things that we’re sort of “right back to where we started,” but because of the margin of victories, well, it makes it a bit clearer for Obama. The key, though, is whether its Obama or Clinton? In my mind, it just needs to be a Democrat in the White House. But my anti-McCain rant is for another time…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 11:50 am by Adam and is filed under Commentary on the News, 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.