On Saturday, What's at stake?

While the DNC punished Florida and Michigan they also failed to move down the finish line to win the nomination or in other words the DNC broke their own rules. The debate is about how many delegates does it take to win the nomination for the Democratic party. The Obama camp says the number to the finish line is 2025, to the DNC its another number or 2209 and Hillary Clinton agrees with the DNC. Since the DNC failed to move down the finish line before the election process began the winner must get 2209 delegates: after all a “rule is a rule.“ The Obama camp wants to change this rule that does benefit him but wants to keep other rules that will not benefit the Senator. The DNC allowed an improperly designed nomination race to begin and punished Florida and Michigan with out modifying the rules of the game. So the game was never properly prepared or calibrated in the first place and voters should not suffer for DNC incompetence.

The Magic number should remain 2209 and Michigan delegates (All superdelegates should keep their full vote but divided Michigan deligates 55% Clinton to 45% Obama) and Florida should be fully seated if we are to stick to a “rule is a rule“. In Michigan Sen. Obama made a bold move by taking his name off of the ballot and lost. Senator Obama was not obligated to do so and now it makes life difficult because it's hard to figure out how to divide the delegates so lets not reword such tactics. In Florida, Republicans can not get away with disenfranchising our members by moving up the elections of Democrats for them in order to cause this problem. Remember Super Delegates, democrats, are mailing in their shoes as a sign that they might walk away from the party. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatens not to let this fight get to the convention Sen. Clinton supporters are not going to listen.

Speaker Pelosi understands that at a convention Sen. Obama would be drowned out by the big states and the millions that voted for Sen. Clinton. The convention is part of the nomination process but Speaker Pelosi wants to stop it; this move by the Speaker does not make political sense. Democrats are exited that the great numbers of voters signing up to vote in these primaries will fallow the Democrats into November. Many of the Democrats that signed up to vote did so motivated only to stop Sen. Obama from getting the nomination. These new sign-ups or voters, the DNC is counting on, will not necessarily tow the line come November during the general election: its more of a hope.

The Democratic leadership may learn a hard lesson November that perhaps running a candidate who won because of small state caucus victories is not enough to win the general election. Also, the new electoral collage strategy is too ambitious for the high stakes game Senator Obama is playing.

If Senator Obama wins, then great a victory for our party, but it does not look good

Rafael Buelna