Why the Pledged Delegate Count Doesn't Mean Anything!

Tonight I saw a whole lot of pundits and Obama supporters on TV get all excited about Obama clinching a majority of the pledged delegates. The obvious sentiment that they were getting at was that it would be a great injustice if Obama didn’t win the nomination. They were acting as if this gives Obama automatic moral authority to be the nominee.

What they all forgot to mention is that the ‘pledged delegate’ count is a complete sham as a measure of the will of the people. There are two major reasons for this:

1) ‘Pledged Delegates’ can change their minds. This alone should delegitimize the pledged delegate count as a measure of the will of the people. While this hasn’t been the biggest this campaign season, two delegates who were ‘pledged’ to support Clinton by the will of the voters changed their minds to support Obama. It’s theoretically possible for 100 delegates to switch from Obama to Clinton to give her the nomination. It’s the same principle, but would it be legitimate?
2) ‘Pledged Delegates’ are awarded disproportionately. This has been a huge problem this year. They are allotted disproportionately by district and by state. Because they are allotted disproportionately by district, it is possible for a candidate to win more votes in a state, but still lose in the state’s delegate count. Because delegates are allotted disproportionately by state (and stay the same regardless of voter turnout), some states have a much higher pledged delegate to voter ratio than other states. Because of this there were wild results like Obama netting 38 delegates from ID, LA, and KA, while Clinton only netted 28 delegates from OH, NJ, and PA. And there were some states with weird rules like Texas, (where a 5,000 win margin by Obama in the caucus counted more than a 100,000 win margin by Clinton in the primary).

The fact that Obama will win more pledged delegates does show two things. For one, it shows that Obama ran a much smarter campaign when it came to winning delegates. And it also shows that Obama is at a huge advantage in the race for the nomination.

However, it does not show that Obama is the clear choice of the people. According to my calculations, Clinton still has a chance to win the popular vote even if you count in estimates for caucuses without popular vote totals and don’t count the Michigan results. If this happened, her argument that she was the will of the people would be just as strong if not stronger than Obama’s argument.

And as long as this scenario happens or has a chance of happening, Obama will not have moral authority to be the nominee no matter what the pledged delegates do.