Various delegate count analysts are showing that Obama made some gains in diminishing the gap between himself and delegate leader Hillary Clinton.
Matt Stoller writes that on a net basis, Obama may have added 45 net delegates more than HIllary Clinton did yesterday. Real Clear Politics has Hillary Clinton ahead overall now by just 15 delegates at 1121 over Obama’s 1106.
In the upcoming near term races — Maine (which takes place today), Virgninia, DC, and Maryland — there are 272 delegates up for grabs.
Ben Smith has published an interesting roster showing the Obama campaign’s own predictions on delegate distribution in these upcoming races — and if the facts on the ground remain similar to the Obama campaign’s expectations — Hillary Clinton will pick up 93 delegates. Obama’s crowd expects harvesting 99 in these races, leaving her still a smidgen ahead.
The two teams need to get their head around the fact that both candidates are exciting to huge swaths of the American public. Neither of them is perfect. They both have serious deficits in their portfolios that Republicans could exploit.
Nothing can stop the efforts of both campaigns at this point to try and win it all outright — but reasonable analysis leads one to see that neither will win. And if one or the other wins via a seduction of super delegates, the fissure inside the party will be too big to ignore. They both need to be on the Democratic ticket. As much as neither wants to admit that, that is increasingly the reality of the current political situation.
Dems need to think about a Nash equilibrium solution — and stop going for one or the other exclusively because it will harm the overall chances of surviving in the November general race. The Nash equilibrium in this case is putting both Clinton and Obama on the same ticket — and getting both to stop denigrating the supporters of the other.
What super delegates may do is to tilt towards Clinton or Obama at the head of the ticket — but the price they give for their support needs to be that one or the other will get the VP slot. And both of them should stop pretending that they wouldn’t take it, including Hillary as VP.
A ticket with either Hillary or Barack Obama at the head of the ticket gets a check point in history. A ticket with both of them on it will probably be a record holder for a very long time.
— Steve Clemons
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