Chaos at the Convention

[jducoeur]

It occurs to me that the Democratic Convention this year is likely to feature fireworks -- and not good ones at that.

The numbers at the moment are interesting. If you look at the CNN Delegate Scorecard, as of right now Obama holds a slender lead in terms of the "pledged" delegates -- the ones who were chosen due to the primary process. But Clinton leads overall, because she has promises from more of the "superdelegates" -- the party honchos who get a vote because of their position in the party.

So let's look at a moderately likely scenario. The convention rolls around, and the race is still too close to call. Obama still holds a lead in the pledged delegates, Clinton in the superdelegates. Things begin to solidify towards Clinton *because* of the superdelegates. What happens?

Hard to say -- not riots, because people generally need better reasons to riot nowadays, but massive and vocal unhappiness among the party. The convention itself turns into a huge scandal, as the pundits talk up the anti-democratic nature of the superdelegates. The superdelegates come under *enormous* pressure to swing their votes to match the popular vote, and people start talking loudly about eliminating the superdelegates entirely. And the whole thing does a fair amount of damage to the Democrats, who look chaotic next to the coronation of McCain (with the hardcore conservatives quietly holding their noses) happening over at the Republican convention.

I do hope the party leadership is ready for this, and thinking about how to react, because it looks to me like it has a fair chance of playing out just this way. They will undoubtedly make lots of noise about how the system is so much better than back in the days of backroom deals, but I don't think that the modern electorate is going to have much sympathy for that. The superdelegate system has continued for many years precisely because it hasn't mattered much. If it *does* start to matter, I think it's going to turn into quite the national stink...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

CNN still hasn't awarded the California delgates to Clinton yet, which will change the picture of the scorecard.

And I can't find anything that tells me if CA is a winner take all state, or if their delgates will be divied up.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

According to the Globe, California delegates are divvied up proportionately, even the Republicans (who are usually winner-take-all).

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

California is a proportional delegate state (the correct google incantation to figure this out is "proportional delegate states" - I then followed the NYT links.) Furthermore, it is skewed towards splitting delegates evenly. Districts have 3-7 delegates possible, and districts with precisely four delegates are going to split 2-2 unless one candidate gets about 2/3 of the vote in that district. Apparently this caused candidates to concentrate on districts with an odd number of candidates (I presume the 6 candidate case has a weaker version of the split problem, though I didn't see that explicitly.)

So Clinton's 10 point victory in California is going to end up somewhat muted in delegate representation.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Thank you!

("Google incantation." How apt.)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

If I remember what I have read correctly, CA is neither winner take all NOR proportional. It goes county by county. Each county sends a delegate, who is bound for the first vote.

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

None of the Democratic primaries are "winner take all." That's currently only for Republican primaries.

[jducoeur]

The Democrats have a relatively consistent system. All states are allocated proportionally (on a congressional district-by-district basis, AFAIK). You have to get a minimum 15% to get anything, and the granularity is still kind of coarse (which causes some interesting effects WRT where the candidates choose to campaign), but it's largely proportional everywhere.

That's part of the issue. As a number of people have been pointing out lately, Obama and Clinton are close enough that it's really fairly unlikely that a winner will be selected before the convention: the proportional system means that the margin between them will probably be smaller than the number of superdelegates. (The question of who "won" a state is mostly irrelevant in the Democratic primary, despite all the media attention to it.) And if the superdelegates swing in the same direction overall that the pledged ones did, I think the whole thing will be a non-issue. But if they change the tally -- if the superdelegates throw the totals toward a different candidate than the popular vote did -- then I think you'll see a lot of thunder and lightning...

[laurion]

Agreed, winning 'states' is a convenient high level marker for the media outlets to throw around, but it breaks down when you start looking at the numbers that really matter.

[laurion]

From my readings, Democrats are entirely proportional across the board (as of their 2006 ruless), and only Republicans still use winner-take-all (as of 2004 rules).

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Fascinating, thank you.

I always have assumed (based on nothing but cynicism, mind) that "back room deals" were still going on, but they're hidden better than they used to be.

[jducoeur]

Well, the current system means that the back room deals aren't relevant *most* of the time. It's been quite a while since we had a contested convention, which is when all the deal-making occurs.

But the very fact that it's rare means that I think people are going to be more appalled by it than they once were...

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I've worried about this scenario for quite awhile now. And I imagine party leaders have as well.

The delegate balance may see-saw some with CA. But I think it unlikely that Clinton will pull so far ahead. I also expect Obama to do well here in the "Chesapeake Primary" next week, although not decisively.

TX and Ohio may end up deciding the thing before the convention.

Finally, to add to the nightmare, there is the Florida and Michigan delegate mess. Clinton has vowed to try to get them seated. Of course, the rank opportunism of trying to get them seated _after_ she won is not lost on the Obama camp. Obama has proposed a "make up" primary in which the state parties could run the primaries again with both candidates campaigning this time. That solution, however, would require state legislatures to act.

If Clinton wins by getting FL and MI delegates seated, there will be a _lot_ of bitterness by Obama supporters and in the African American community, which will once again feel that Whitey moved the goal post as soon as a black man got too close. OTOH, refusal to seat FL and MI delegates will anger Dems in those states, which will certainly be major battle grounds against McCain.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

First: I think that the game will be sewn up before the convention begins. There are tons of super-delegates, and many more that are not bound in the first vote. I doubt very much that the convention vote will go past one round.

And I agree with oswalrus, except that there are 3 states that will be interesting - South Carolina only has half the proper delegate count, while FL and MI have zero. I was in FL this weekend, and I talked politics with some Democrats. They are frigging steamed that their votes don't count, and are blaming anyone except their state committee.

Hilary is, of course, angling to "now count" those delgates she otherwise could not get. She is a fool to do so in such a naked manner. The ONLY thing that can lose the Democrat's the coming election (other than some nasty surprise) is if the party fights itself to death. Winning the convention WITH those "tainted delegates" is a kiss of death, and there will be blood on the convention floor.

Hilary would be smart, very smart, to stop now and say "We can't count them in the first round, unless they re-schedule a primary, but they can vote in any subsequent rounds". She might still win (I give good odds, although I'd rather she didn't) and if so: it's one party, minus some very angry FL, MI and SC Democrats (of which, FL is the big one that really matters.) If she gets them in, win or lose, the party is wounded going into November.

(Look for a lot of this text to recycle into a post of my own. I've been thinking about this for a while...)

[jducoeur]

First: I think that the game will be sewn up before the convention begins. There are tons of super-delegates, and many more that are not bound in the first vote. I doubt very much that the convention vote will go past one round.

That's possible. In particular, if Clinton has the edge in the pledged delegates, however slight the margin, I expect her to calmly coast to the nomination. But in most other scenarios I'm seeing, things are likely to get pretty ugly, with a lot of nasty infighting and recriminations no matter how quickly it goes. A single-round victory isn't necessarily a *good* victory, if it winds up with the party bitterly divided...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I covered this, ad nauseum, in a recent post. As I warned you I might. :-)

I agree that, if I were a DNC major-person, I'd be worried about two things: party unity, and whomever can kick McCain's buttocks. :-)

I don't see how those goals can be met with any division over the 3 unseated states, or multiple rounds of voting.

The power is there to prevent it, with unpledged and super-delegates.

[redsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I am a Florida Democrat. And I am indeed pissed. And in fact, I am pissed at my state committee. Of course, that predates this mess; my Dad's been involved with the local Dems and the state committee promises candidates the moon and then welshes on that promise on a regular basis. So I have a very low opinion of them. I am even more pissed at the DNC. The FL legislature set the primary date. It is overwhelmingly Republican (in a pretty much 50/50 state due to the use of creative gerrymandering). The few Dems in the legislature voted for the primary date because they were bribed with an amendment they'd been trying to get passed for years and it's not as if they'd have any effective say about the date anyway. The Republicans are laughing themselves silly over the success of their plan. I'm seriously pissed at ALL the candidates for gutlessly knuckling in to the party and boycotting our state. If they'd all decided to ignore the ban en masse, the party would have found it impossible to enforce. Grrr.
Now that the whole farce has been enacted, I think it would be outrageously two-faced of the party to turn around and say "oops, we didn't mean it, sorry." Because we didn't get a fair election - we never got to hear the candidates, we never heard them speak to us about our issues. I tend to favor Obama. He's not well know in the state and never had a chance to be known. So Clinton won easily on the little old lady and cracker votes. But it doesn't really matter in the general election because after this debalce the Dems sure aren't going to take FL. Hell, I'm a flaming liberal Dem and if Clinton gets the nomination, I'm considering voting for McCain. And if she succeeds in getting away with taking the FL delegates without us, I'm bloody well doing so.
Clinton may get the nomination. But she'll lose the general election. (Think Dukakis. Or Mondale.) You can't win on just the Democrats, you've got to get the swing voters and too many people hate her guts. And her conduct in the primaries isn't helping her image. Too bad the party honchos owe her and Bill their superdelegates because they've got to have some idea about this. Or maybe not. After all, they're the ones who fell for this whole Florida primary set-up.

[laurion]

Nice to see your perspective! I'm really pissed that the DNC knows the Republicans got the primary moved just to screw with the Democrats, and let them get away with it. I mean, yes, the Dems set a reasonable policy of 'no state primary before the 5th, with certain exceptions'. They set the rules, when someone uses the rules against them, they should be able to change them again so crap like this doesn't happen.

[driftingfocus.livejournal.com]

*Very* interesting theory!

[hungrytiger]

FYI, one of the CNN analysts I was watching was talking about the same superdelagate issue and he said that many of the superdelategs he had spoken with said that they would be very uncomfortable going against the popular vote, even if they had already pledged to the other candidate; possibly uncomfortable enough to switch over. I think most of the party remembers the 2000 Florida mess well enough to not want to be responsible for slecting a candidate through methods that the public would find distasteful.

Which really has me wondering about Hillary's statements about possibly getting the courts involved in reinstating the FL and MI delagates. There's nothing that would turn me off faster than a national candidate trying to litigate their way to the Presidency.

[laurion]

Wouldn't it be great if she did get MI and FL in, just to have superdelegates from those states switch to Obama because of the political mess Clinton is causing?

[serakit.livejournal.com]

How does the convention work, then? What does being bound in the first vote mean, and what do you mean when you speak of going more than one round? Don't they just go, vote, and whoever has more delegates has the nomination?

[ckd]

There are more than two candidates with pledged delegates, so it's quite possible for the first vote to have no majority. It's not a plurality vote, so at that point they go to another voting round, in which the pledged delegates are no longer required to vote for their originally pledged candidate.

[jrising.livejournal.com]

There's an added twist, depending on how close Obama and Clinton end up. Edwards still has his delegates, and he gets to decide who they vote for (I believe). Which potential puts him in a position of being an even more powerful king-maker.

I'll be very surprised if this gets out of hand. Right now, it's all great shtik: everyone is waiting the their seats' edges over the Democratic primaries. By the time the convention rolls around, I'm sure Dean and the DNC will have made sure the candidates and delegates all know where they stand, and the loser will throw all his/her support to the victor with a smile (and I think both Obama and Clinton are good enough players that they will do that).

[jducoeur]

Which potential puts him in a position of being an even more powerful king-maker.

Could happen, yes. He doesn't have a *lot* of votes relative to the total, and has vastly fewer than the number of superdelegates, so I think this is mildly unlikely. But if he plays his cards right, he could find himself with an unusual amount of influence at the convention, especially if he is smart about using that influence to sway superdelegates.

the loser will throw all his/her support to the victor with a smile (and I think both Obama and Clinton are good enough players that they will do that).

Oh, yes -- they've pretty clearly signaled their intentions in that regard. The whole "I was friends with Hilary before, and I'll be friends with Hilary after" speech last week was a very explicit sign that both of them understand the stakes, and that the party expects a measure of unity.

Indeed, I think the single thing that has most doomed Romney, over on the Republican side, is that he does *not* understand this. He's been burning bridges left and right, and all reports indicate that the rest of the candidates (and their staffs) hate him with a burning and abiding passion. Hence, you get the interesting sight of McCain and Huckabee -- arguably the most moderate and conservative of the Republicans -- teaming up pretty explicitly to destroy him...