Playing along with the Sanders’ super delegate argument ~ The Scorecard

Let’s start with something we’ve been saying for awhile. It is our firm belief that Secretary Clinton has locked up the Democratic nomination. As of today, she would need only 108 of the remaining 169 super delegates to win the nomination with no new pledged delegates. Because she currently holds 90% of super delegates and would only need 64% of those outstanding, she has clinched.

Just for argument’s sake, however, we are going to tease out Sanders’ claim that he can win with super delegates. As it stands now, Clinton leads by 272 pledged delegates. Let’s assume Sanders runs as well as can be expected through the remaining states and nets 22 delegates. (We think he is more likely to lose another 50 or 60 delegates, perhaps even a bit more, but that is not the point now.) He would still end down 250 pledged delegates. Because there are only 714 total super delegates, Sanders would need 482, or 67.5% of them, to overcome Clinton’s pledged delegate margin.

How likely is Sanders to get those super delegates? If Clinton only took super delegates from districts or states she won by over 15% that still would give her enough super delegates to claim the nomination. Therefore Sanders in essence is asking super delegates to go against the pledged delegate winner, against a fair approximation of the overall popular vote, against what the super delegates want to do and against what the large majority of the delegates’ own voters wanted. Convincing the super delegates to overturn the will of the voters is going to be very hard.

The Clinton campaign could have made a similar play for super delegates in 2008, with an even better case. Obama won the pledged delegates by about 100 or so (less than Clinton’s current lead) and much of the Obama margin came from victories in caucuses. In addition, Clinton in 2008 may have gotten more votes than Obama (a precise accounting is hard to do) and she had slightly better poll numbers. Clinton also had more friends in the Democratic party structure (still does) than Sanders. But her major supporters in New York would have no part of a convention fight and she was out two days after the voting ended. If Clinton couldn’t do it then why should we assume Sanders can do it now? We don’t understand the difference and would love to hear from others what we’re missing.

The question also becomes whether the Sanders campaign can keep pressuring the same group for the six weeks after voting stops. That seems excessive. There’s also a big problem with Sanders’ best argument for why super delegates should switch. Sanders seems to be polling better against Donald Trump than Clinton but that may be because Sanders supporters are refusing to say they support Clinton but Clinton supporters are saying they will support Sanders. That may not last. If Sanders spends six weeks trying to flip super delegates and spouting conspiracy theories, Clinton supporters probably will start telling pollsters they wouldn’t support him either.

It is really hard to see how Sanders can make a good case to super delegates to back him.