Thursday, May 22, 2008
Obama’s pretend milestone
Pretend you are a candidate for the Democratic nomination and you just lost the Kentucky primary by 35 points. What do you do? If you are Barack Obama, you fly to Iowa and announce that you have just achieved a pretend milestone. You announce that you have won an absolute majority of pledged delegates.
Think of it as Barack Obama’s very own MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment. The only thing lacking was a flight suit and an aircraft carrier.
From Larry Johnson’s superb blog NO QUARTER:
How does winning a majority of pledged delegates qualify as a “major milestone”? It doesn’t, because winning the majority of pledged delegates does not make Obama the nominee. Period.
Under the Democratic Party’s un-democratic rules, super-delegates can vote for whomever they want (and they can switch), regardless of the pledged-delegate totals or popular-vote count.
Facts aside, some media have given air time to Obama’s surrogates to create potentially misleading headlines and sound bites about the pretend “milestone.”
I often wonder if Obama supporters even know that superdelegates don’t actually cast their superdelegate vote until the Democratic National Convention in August. From reading many of their posts on Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, I’m guessing not. Otherwise I’m not sure they would be so visceral and arrogant about their favorite candidate.
The superdelegates will have a choice to make in August. Will they simply go with the candidate that has a slight lead in the pledged delegates or will they go with the candidate that has a slight lead in the popular vote?
Obama might regain his lead in the popular vote in the remaining contests, but he seems to have all but decided to start campaigning for the general election against John McCain. He seems confident that he will be given the nomination no matter what happens in the remaining contests.
