The Delegate Fight: Obama Clinches!

[emailking]

The Obama campaign apparently dominated the Nevada convention, with 55% of state-level delegates who showed up supporting him. That means he managed to break the even split of the statewide delegates in his favor and probably also got the add-on (no confirmation on that yet):

http://blogs.rgj.com/inside-nevada-politics/

Nevada splits 14-11 Obama (instead of the original 13-12).

How does this even happen? Does this mean that many people who agreed to be delegates for Hillary and were elected as such just decided not to go?

[emailking]

Thanks for the explanation.

I really think this whole method is just insane. The whole thing is like a bunch of different levels of electoral college. It's 2008. I think we should either go by the popular vote or make the various levels of representation automatic after the actual initial voting.

[emailking]

The thing is that some caucus states don't have concrete evaluations on who turned out for who. Just delegate allocations.

I'm hoping this part will change, but if it doesn't or can't then I would say make it automatic based on the initial delegate allocations out of election night. Basically, I think we should take out of the process the possibility of the "faithless elector" so to speak, or the delegate who can't show up because it's a long drive and Obama is going to win anyway, etc.

[emailking]

I've never heard someone talk about a "pledged superdelgate." Anyway, all delegates can vote for whomever they want at the convention. A so called "pledged" or "elected" delegate is merely breaking his/her promise if voting for someone else. Superdelegates have more political leeway to change their minds if they choose since they are supposed to be making up their own minds (by whatever standard) in the first place.

[emailking]

This has been a great process, folks.  (Certainly a wonderful distraction from physics, which I'm sure my advisor is grateful for ). 

Hey what kind of physics do you do? I'm in physics too. I stopped at my Master's though and went into industry.