Mulligan Stew

Michigan appears to push closer to a deal on a do-over primary, while Florida appears to push away from one. This sets up nicely for Obama to accept a deal, make the Florida vote official, seat the delegates, take the hit on the delegate count, and try like hell to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana and North Carolina and just end this. But Obama's team is maintaining that no delegate spread based on the January 29 vote will be acceptable to them. That could just be a bargaining position, however.

Meanwhile, Chris Bowers thinks we're headed to the convention. It's pretty compelling. When a deal on Michigan and Florida is struck (and one eventually will), the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination goes up to 2,208, which is a steeper hill to climb.

There is a growing sentiment that the "delegate math" favors Obama, and that he will wrap-up the nomination in June. While this is a sentiment with which I generally agree, upon closer analysis of the delegate math I think that Clinton has a better chance than many realize. In fact, a close look at the delegate math indicates that there is a good chance we will either head to the convention without a presumptive nominee, or head to the convention with a barely presumptive nominee. By "barely presumptive," I mean a candidate who is just slightly over 2,208, with that total possibly disputed by the opposing campaign. Overall, I would say there is a greater than 50% we will face one of those two scenarios [...] While he will have a lead, there is a pretty good chance there will still be enough undecided superdelegates and Edwards delegates to prevent either candidate from reaching 2,208 by June 10th. Further, even if Obama does barely eek over 2,208 in June, it is unlikely that the Clinton campaign will concede defeat as long as they still believe they can flip enough superdelegates to win the nomination.

In other words, a close look at the delegate math indicates that there is a good chance we will either head to the convention without a presumptive nominee, or head to the convention with a barely presumptive nominee. At the very least, we are headed all the way through June. A question we might want to start asking is how many delegates Obama needs to have in order to get Clinton to concede before the convention in either June or July. Personally, I don't think that number is 2,208, since they will almost certainly believe they can flip a handful of superdelegates. The actual number might be something like 2,240 or even higher, which would make the delegate flipping task virtually impossible. Other than losing a state like Pennsylvania or Florida, such an enormous delegate total strikes me as just about the only way Clinton will concede before the convention. If you have noticed anything else in her campaign behavior up until this point that indicates otherwise, I think we are watching different nomination campaigns.

This is a really agonizing situation based on a process that does not operate well with a close race. There are really two options - Obama wins Pennsylvania and Hillary concedes (and I think she would), or we go to Denver. Not that such a course is necessarily justified, but that's clearly where we are. Any Michigan and Florida re-votes wouldn't happen until June 3, which greatly increases the odds that the race will go on because there'd be a big delegate prize out there.

Jeepers.