First, you might not know that the fight about Michigan and Florida isn't just a fight about whether there should be a primary or a caucus, or who should get how many pledged delegates. It's also about superdelegates, because unless the Michigan and Florida delegations are seated, the superdelegates from those states won't have a say. There's 313 pledged delegates in the two states and 54 superdelegates. According to Democratic Convention Watch, of the superdelegates who have committed, 15 support Clinton, and 5 support Obama.
Second, as I said a couple of days ago, but bears repeating -- there are two states in which the Democratic primary turnout was lower than the Republican turnout. Those two states? Michigan and Florida. Proof positive that Democrats in those states did not take the primaries as seriously as Democrats in other states.
Finally, there's a lot of talk about the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton claims to lead by virtue of Michigan and Florida. (Kind of hilarious that she would include Michigan, where Obama wasn't on the ballot.) One of the problems with popular vote is that everybody has a different definition of popular vote. How do you count Texas, for example, where about 2.8 million voted in the primary and 1.1 million in the caucuses? Or Washington, which had a primary but the primary was a beauty contest because all the state's delegates were distributed in the caucuses?
Well, let's look at what happens if you just total every thing up, including Michigan, Washington, Florida, and both the Texas caucuses and Texas primaries. Mind you, I don't necessarily think this is a good definition of the popular vote, but it certainly is the most expansive one.
It turns out that using this method Barack Obama has received 14.84 million votes compared to 14.59 for Hillary Clinton. In order to claim a victory, the Clinton people remove Washington and the Texas caucuses from the totals (plus some other caucuses, I believe). So when the Clinton campaign claims a popular vote lead they might as well be saying: "we're leading in the states we choose to count."
I'll leave you with one postscript: in Michigan, which Clinton "won," she received 328,151 votes. Uncommitted won 265,686. Something tells me Obama will be picking up delegates in Michigan if there is revote. But Clinton still likes a revote, because it means more superdelegates can go to the convention.
© Jed Lewison