A belated update!
Including primary results from Kentucky and Oregon, Clinton now has a majority of delegates from primary votes. Clinton 1325.5, Obama 1322, Edwards 12.
As an aside, it’s intriguing to see Clinton mention that Bobby Kennedy was still in the race in at the time of his assassination in June. It was even more interesting to see the press jump on the mention of the assassination, but not that the current campaign is far more decided than it was in June 1968. It was also interesting to see the Kennedy-Obama comparison being drawn, even though the Kennedy-Clinton comparison was the actual comparison being made. Kennedy was not the frontrunner at the time of his killing: he was second, as is Clinton. Nice to see the press swing hard and miss at this one.
Numbers from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2008
Obama holds a 2-1 delegate lead from states using caucuses. (319 Obama, 176 Clinton, 6 Edwards). So it’s clear to me that Obama’s campaign has been superior at working the party system, which is the key to good caucusing.
When delegates are chosen by direct party vote, the delegate count tells a much different story (1277 Obama, 1267.5 Clinton, 12 Edwards). So it appears to me that Obama isn’t appearing as universally palatable to the general populace as I infer from the press.
It is interesting to see the superdelegates (who are supposedly the best qualified to choose the candidate that will best support the party’s interests) initially supported Clinton, and only support Obama now that he is the supposed imminent nominee. In other words, he really isn’t the best candidate (otherwise, he would have had superdelegate support in February and March), but it better for the party to have the second-best candidate than to have a fuss.
