Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Obama in Iowa "We have returned with a majority of elected delegates"

Barack Obama is speaking in Iowa and getting very close to claiming victory in the Democratic Primary. It's a good strategy to make it much harder for the Clinton campaign to work the Florida and Michigan and Superdelegate angle - an incomprehensible mess left over from a poorly structured primary.

The Obama campaign is keeping up the "hey, we have won this now!" spin as he spoke today in Iowa. He's even cleverly throwing out kudos to Hillary Clinton, lauding her participation and saying he's grateful to her .... and now going on to suggest the party needs unity.

So has he won? Of course not. Obama however has a clear lead in elected delegates, and as we calculated earlier this week even if you assign a generous number of the Florida and Michigan delegates to Clinton she'd still have fewer than Obama. Therefore it's unlikely that the Clinton's will turn as many superdelegates as Obama. Superdelegates will want to go with a winner, so look for a large block of them to soon announce that they are pledging to put Obama over the number needed to win - this could happen as soon as this week. At that point Hillary will very likely drop out so the Democrats can have a unified convention.

No comments: