Delegate Race: Bernie takes WV, Hillary +276, How 2008 Really Ended.

Sen Sanders won yesterday’s West Virginia primary by a margin of 51%-36% for a delegate split of 18-11. However, the basic state of the race is unchanged as even the 18-11 delegate split was slightly less than the just over 65% of pledged delegates Sen Sanders needs from here on in order to claim a majority of pledged delegates. The 13% of the vote that went to other candidates shouldn’t be considered unusual for West Virginia — it has become a hostile state for national democrats, after all, this is a state that gave more than 40% of its vote in the 2012 democratic primary to a prison inmate, rather than to President Obama.

I’ve been meticulously counting the pledged delegates throughout this primary season, but as we near the end, it is time to consider the superdelegates as well. The superdelegates have never handed the nomination to a candidate who didn’t win the majority of pledged delegates, and with Hillary Clinton having a wide lead among pledged delegates (+276 according to my tracking from The Green Papers and other sources) it has become obvious that Hillary Clinton will cross the 2383 threshold of all delegates (including the superdelegates) needed to claim the nomination. And that she will do so on June 7th when the vast majority of remaining pledged delegates will be allocated.

According to Bloomberg, Clinton has 523 superdelegates expressing support for her, and Sanders has 39. That means that Sec Clinton has 2238 combined delegates (1715 pledged and 523 super) while Sen Sanders has 1478 combined delegates (1439 pledged and 39 super). Consequently, Hillary Clinton needs 311 more pledged delegates to get to a majority of pledged delegates and 145 more delegates (of any type) to get to a majority of all delegates. She is easily on track to attaining both those numbers, and on the same day — June 7, when 694 pledged delegates are up for grabs. Even with West Virginia being demographically her worst state remaining, especially due to her comments about coal jobs not being well received there, Hillary still got more than 35% of pledged delegates there — the threshold of remaining pledged delegates that she needs to claim the pledged delegate majority. With favorable, delegate-rich contests for her upcoming, like New Jersey and Puerto Rico, it’s not inconceivable that Hillary could cease campaigning in the primaries and still get more than the 35% of the remaining pledged delegates she needs — the very definition of a glide path. 

As usual, all numbers are from The Green Papers (I have Nevada projected at 18-17 due to the results of the county conventions — the Green Papers still has it projected at 20-15). 

Since last Tuesday’s primary in Indiana, one delegate has shifted from Sec Clinton to Sen Sanders in Maine, while Hillary won the pledged delegates from Guam 4-3. Her leads stands at 276, well above all the delegate targets used by the 538 and the Cook Report as an indicator of who is actually leading the primary race.

Recently, I’ve been seeing comments suggesting that Hillary Clinton only got out of the race in 2008 because Barack Obama, after having claimed enough pledged and super delegates for the nomination, made a deal with her. Some variations of this claim suggests he offered the Secretary of State position for her support, while others say he offered to help her retire her huge campaign debt. I want to say that both these claims are categorically false, and frankly, the former would be illegal. These claims are a misremembering of what actually happened in 2008.

On the night of the final primaries on June 3, 2008, Barack Obama claimed the nomination by crossing the delegate threshold needed (including superdelegates — he did not get to a majority of all delegates with pledged delegates alone), and on that night, Hillary’s campaign said they weren’t making a decision then and didn’t concede. The story told by some is that sometime after that night, Barack reached out to her, made a deal, and then she conceded on Saturday June 7th, 2008. That retelling misses what actually happened. Very early in the morning on the very next day after the final primaries (June 4th), in a pre-planned move,  a united democratic party leadership wrote an open letter  designed to urge then Sen Clinton to concede. What’s more, they urged all superdelegates to declare their support by that Friday (another reason why we will not have a contested convention this year — party leadership can apply pressure to superdelegates to declare their support early). But this was not enough, Hillary  still did not concede. Instead, that same day, she called her congressional colleagues who had supported her, to gauge their continued support. The response from them made it crystal clear to her that she had to concede and the decision was made that very day, June 4th, as documented in this contemporary article. 

Still, she said nothing about surrender in Wednesday morning staff meetings. It wasn't until her afternoon phone call with Congressional colleagues that she, well, accepted their message that it was over. And needed to end quickly. And she made the decision to pull the plug.

So no. It wasn’t some special deal with Barack that got Hillary to quit in 2008. It was the party establishment that forced her out. The big wigs, the elite, the DNC chair. And that will happen again this year if Bernie refuses to concede after the final primary. After he does concede, there will be unity talks, as there were in 2008 between Hillary and Barack. But, if and when the party establishment pushes Bernie to concede as they did with Hillary eight years ago, will he commit himself to supporting the nominee wholeheartedly as Hillary did in 2008, or will there be cries of the party establishment fighting against him?