Although it looked like she had "virtually no chance a couple of winning" a couple of weeks ago, Clinton is trying to ride the momentum from her PA victory to reclaim herself as the frontrunner in this close (and may I add exhausting) contest. A New York Times article published today descibes how a little number crunching can put her ahead of Obama. Clinton and her team are renewing their efforts to have the Michigan and Florida delegates seated at the national convention, and they contend that she leads in votes cast if tallies in those states are counted. The results of these two states are currently not recognized because they broke Democratic Party rules by having early primaries. In addition, the delegates were denied seats at the national convention.
On Thursday, a Michigan superdelegate filed a complaint to the party leadership demanding that at least half the state's delegated be seated at the national convention. Similar complaints have been made in Florida, and they are all under review. Clinton won these states by double digit margins, and counting them would put her popular vote count at just over 15 million, with Obama just below 15 million. Currently, under the "rules," Obama is ahead in popular votes by roughly 500,000, but untimtely it is delegates, not votes, who decide who the presidential candidate will be.
I think this "controversy" is a great way for Clinton to win over superdelegates. It will bring attention to the fact that in all reality, Clinton HAS gotten the most votes when they are ALL counted. A lead in popoluar votes is a very compelling argument to win over superdelegates. Obama has consistently used that fact to prove he deserves to win thus far. But now, I think the title should go to Clinton.
Who is the REAL frontrunner? And should the delegates of Michigan and Florida be seated at the convention ?
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I think you raise a good point that this debate might be able to help Clinton convince superdelegates that she should be ahead of Obama in the popular vote total, when Michigan and Florida are included, but I don't know how much there is to her argument. For instance, on Good Morning America on Wednesday, Clinton argued that the votes from Florida and Michigan should count because, after all, the results of those two contests were declared official by each state's election officials. She was arguing that since the election was deemed official and she did so well, the results should count, even while she understands that party rules dictate that the delegates from those states will not. This seems to be a very picky argument and just screams that she is trying to bend the rules to her advantage. To further that point, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe maintained that Clinton should be declared the party's nominee if she ends up with the most total votes, including Florida and Michigan of course, after all the contests have been held. But when asked what would happen if Obama was the leader of the vote total at that point, McAuliffe was not willing to say that Obama should automatically be the nominee. That's just another sign that the Clinton campaign does not want to play this game totally fair and does not want to define what a win and a loss is.
There may eventually be a resolution that allows Florida and Michigan to seat their delegates at the convention, but until the point, I don't think a popular vote argument that includes the results from those two states can be considered. There was no campaigning and Obama and Edwards' names didn't even appear on the ballots in both contests. Clinton can argue that she is proving the second-guessing of Americans toward Obama in recent contests, or that she is now the more electable candidate, but she cannot argue that she has a lead in this race with any real backing to her argument. Even MSNBC's Chuck Todd said Tuesday night that Clinton will never be able to overcome Obama's delegate lead from here on, that is, unless Michigan and Florida come back into the fold somehow.
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