Letters to the Editor
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Proportional Award System
The reason neither can close the deal is because of the proportional award system for delegates that the Dems use combined with the popular vote/caucus split in democratic primaries.
A proportionate award system may make sense in parliamentary elections to ensure accurate representation of the electorate, but it's a bad way to choose a single, national candidate.
If we had a similar system in our presidential election-- proportional delegates with a certain bar that must be met to actually win-- we would have had several presidential elections in American history with no outright winner.
Add to that the "superdelegates"-- party elders whose envisioned function was to stop a far-left candidate from winning a close primary battle and taking the party down to sure defeat in a general election-- and you have the current mess.
Barack Obama's passionate supporters don't want to hear this, and the media doesn't make much mention of it-- but if the primaries were conducted winner-take-all fashion, Clinton would have clinched some time ago. It wouldn't be this close. And if a simple popular vote tally was used (with Florida and Michigan voting and counting), it would have been closer, but Clinton would also have already wrapped it up. As dramatic as Obama's rise has been, his ultimate victory (presuming he does win) will have been possible in no small part because of the weird demonratic primary system and the dual oddity of two big states not counting.