Letters to the Editor
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rufus11
The crazy thing about Michigan is that even though Hillary and Kucinich were the only named candidates on the Democratic ballot, Hillary beat "Uncommitted" by only 15%.
Yes, forty percent of Michigan primary voters bothered to go to the polls to vote for "Not Hillary." You can see why she's trumpeting that victory!
But if you were to give Hillary all of the delegates for the 55% percent she won and gave the rest to Obama, she would net twelve delegates (if you were seating the full Michigan delegation) or six (if you were penalizing them half of their delegates the same way the Republicans are).
If you give Hillary the delegates for her 50% of the Florida vote, she would get 93, and if you gave Obama the delegates for his 33% of the Florida vote, he would pick up 61, so she would net 32 delegates (if you're seating the full delegation) or 16 (if you were penalizing them half as the Republicans are). I have no idea what would happen to the delegates for the 14% that went to Edwards.
So, even with seating the Florida and Michigan delegations without penalty according to the logic above, Obama is still one hundred pledged delegates up over Hillary.
It would almost be worth it to get them to shut the fuck up about Michigan and Florida. The incessant whining really gets on my nerves.
And even if you throw the Florida tallies into the popular vote figures, she's still down over 200,000 votes.
That's why adding Michigan is so dishonest. Hillary gets to add the 55% of voters who voted for her name, but Obama doesn't get credit for the 40% who voted "Not Hillary."
Note that I am bending over backwards here to give them the benefit of a number of doubts, just to show that even if you cut them a LOT of slack, their case is not as strong as they're making it out to be.