Democratic Endgame

Barack Obama will be the Democratic Nominee. However he’s got a big problem. The TV networks, the Republican Party, and his opponent are all working as hard as they can to extend the Democratic primaries as long as possible. The TV networks are raking in dollars from all the campaign advertising and the high ratings. The Republican Party wants to see the Democrats spend all their money fighting each other. And Hillary Clinton is indicating that she’ll keep fighting in spite of the fact that her only winning scenario is extremely ugly and likely Pyrrhic.

The Obama campaign was well-positioned to go into end-game mode today … even with the Hillary Clinton victories. Going back to the spreadsheet leaked by the Obama campaign:

http://ia341038.us.archive.org/1/items/Obamaexcel/obamacampaignexcel.xls

They had expected to be ahead by 58 delegates today and they are 75 delegates ahead of that pace due to the overwhelming victories in the MD, VA, and WI primaries. Looking at the spreadsheet, if Clinton were to run the table with 15 point victories in every contest she would pick up roughly 100 delegates between now and the end of the race. So Obama’s 133 pledged delegate lead is looking pretty unbeatable right now.

Based on that outlook, the superdelegates are about to put their thumb on the scale. Obama is rumored to have about 50 new superdelegate commitments that he is going to roll out. This would erase the Clinton superdelegate lead and then some. Essentially, the race would be out of reach and more superdelegates would pile onto the Obama campaign, the outcome would be inevitable and Clinton would be forced to bow out.

This superdelegate thumb on the scale scenario or something close to it may still happen, but Gov Crist in FL threw a fly into the ointment. Gov Crist announced that he would support a re-do of the FL primary. This in spite of the fact that he that forced the early primary in the first place and thus was the reason that the FL delegates were disqualified. Until now, he had stood in the way of the re-do due to the $10M price tag (and assumably he wanted to damage the Democratic party’s chances to win FL in the general election). However since he’s now willing to accept the cost of the re-do (due to the damage an extended battle would cause to the Democratic candidate) FL’s 185 delegates and assumably MI’s 128 delegates are back in play. In the Hillary-run’s-the-table-by 15% scenario, she now passes Obama. Granted, this is still very hard but not impossible.

FL and MI create the same problem for Obama that TX and OH did … everyone knows how they will probably come out, but until they complete you can’t say that the Obama win is inevitable. So what’s Obama to do? An extended race with FL and MI in June would force him to spend money and time that he would otherwise use to fight John McCain.

If I were Barack Obama I’d strike the following deal: First, accept the original FL results. (he lost by 17% which resulted in 38 delegates net loss) on condition that a MI re-do would be a caucus held prior to PA.

Here’s the rationale:

1. He’s got enough delegates to to cover the loss in FL and still have the insurmountable lead.
2. He’s likely to lose a FL primary by 10-15% no matter what. FL is old and old is Hillary’s demo.
3. He owns caucuses so he’s likely to recover some of his losses in MI.
4. Hillary is likely to accept the deal because it’s good for her and she’d get a lot of pressure from her party to do so.
5. In the perception game, the FL loss will have an asterisk. Plus he’s taking a bullet for team D and thus is a hero. If the primary were to be re-run and he lost, then he’d risk losing momentum.

The bottom line is that if Obama cut such a deal, after the MI caucus he’d be basically where he expected to be today. The FL and MI problem would be neatly taken care of, and the superdelegates can avalanche to his side prior to PA more or less ending things.

UPDATE:
Crist is backing off of his statement that he'd support a re-do.

http://www.local10.com/news/15504360/detail.html

So Obama eating these delegates may not be necessary. One way or another the Dems have to figure out a way to end this after PA. In the end, Hillary supporters and FL and MI Dems have to feel like they got a fair deal.