Barack Obama has won a majority of the pledged delegates in the Democratic race for U.S. president, Is this true ? http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/20/primary.wrap/index.html Or just media hype ? Breaking News
Wouldn't doubt it? It was predicted that Obama would beat out Clinton for a while now, and Hillary had a VERY low chance to actually beat Obama for a while, and today was the day it could of decided the factor that Obama beat her. Only way she could of possibly won if Obama was badly injured or a skeleton came out of the closet or something.
Whats a delegate for, I mean dont the people choose who they want, and not some bribed (possibly) "delegate".
Yes, it's true, Britishguy. He has not yet won a majority of the Superdelegates, though he is very close there, but he has won a majority of pledged delegates, and Senator Clinton cannot now mathematically overtake him, regardless of the final primaries to come.
What do you mean "Is it true?" Of course it's true. It's math. It's not something that someone can have an "opinion" about it. It's a fact. Obama has clinched the pledged delegate victory. I see a flood of superdelegates coming Obama's way now - He's not that far from passing the presumptive nominee threshold. It could be in the next few days unless Obama holds them back for some political reasons.
I've been finding it fun to use this democratic delegate calculator every so often and play with the numbers of the remaining pledged and super delegates. Obama has had it for quite a while.
But Math is not a strong point in American politics is it? I seem to recall Gore had more votes than George W Bush, then Bush engaged the lawyers and the outcome was that the world was then subjected to the Worst World Leader in History That is why I question the Math?
I think you're confusing a couple of things, Britishguy. The 2000 election was a question that came down to what actually counted as votes, based on an extremely close race that came down to florida, with a vote spread of hundreds, and a crappy vote system that included people interpreting "chads" and other paper-ambiguities. In this race, the only issue comes down to 2 things: Clinton would like the Michigan and Florida votes to be registered, and for the remaining superdelegates to go her way. The votes officially entered are not in dispute. This is the difference from the 2000 election. Now, even if Hillary had her way respecting MI and FL, she would not take Obama in delegate counts. Further, she won't have her way. These states' blew it, early on, and knew going in their primaries would not count because of it. At best, for Clinton, some kind of brokered agreement will take place on May 31 such that she will get some delegates from these states - but nothing will happen because of it. Her only other option is that the superdelegates now fully abandon Obama and go entirely with her. Presuming this is ludicrous in the extreme. Remember that only a matter of days ago, Obama roundly lost West Virginia and yet he continued to pick up a sizeable net gain of superdelegates. With tonight's mixed results in Oregon and Kentucky, I would expect no change in the inevitability of Obama's candidacy, in terms of both delegates and superdelegates. Again, the issue here is what might come, under an impossible scenario in the remaining primaries. The issue in 2000 is not what might have come in remaining contests, but what did come, in terms of actual votes already cast in FL, a state necessary for the Presidency. Two entirely different things.
No. The question was really never Gore having more votes (he won the popular vote) - we have a delegate system here so that wasn't the holdup. The holdup was Florida. That's a whole different situation, didn't really have anything to do with math. Had everything to do with corruption.
It literally came down to interpretations of paper votes, with subjective judgments by electoral officials. We are talking about a race that came down to 300-500 Floridian votes, with votes being cast on paper ballots. The Supreme Court chiming in on the recount process, the President's brother being governor, and a strongly ideological Republican (Katherine Harris, also, co-chair of Bush's Florida campaign committee) as Secretary of State led many to conclude the election had been stolen. Again, utterly different from what we are talking about here. There is no debate over votes cast.