Everybody’s very intrepidly attempting to conjure the current delegate count. Of course, the problems with Superdelegates, Florida, and Michigan make it difficult to decide which standards apply, but there seem to be more different totals than applicable standards.
CNN has it at Barack Obama 1262, Hillary Clinton 1213.
Jerome Armstrong has a pledged count of Clinton 1127, Obama 1119, with Superdelegates at Clinton 240, Obama 140.
Covering different bases, MSNBC has Obama at 1078, 1128, or 1306, with Clinton at 969, 1009, or 1270.
The New York Times has Obama 934, Clinton 892, and also gives the AP count of Obama 1275, Clinton 1220.
Real Clear Politics has Obama 1302, Clinton 1235.
The Washington Post gives Obama 1280, and Clinton 1218.
Confused yet?
And while I thank everyone who is trying to figure this out, the real story, as usual, is not even being discussed; the question is this: if all these intelligent, assiduous efforts are coming up with so many different results, how screwed up is the Democratic Party’s nominating system? We’re talking about a presidential election, and we’re talking about an in-house effort. This can’t be blamed on hanging chads, butterfly ballots, Diebold or Katherine Harris.
Given the level of vitriol and distrust that is poisoning the partisans of both candidates’ camps, wouldn’t a clear, transparent system of determining who is actually winning, and by how much, be of some benefit? This is a mess. This is the Democratic Party’s mess! Whoever wins this nomination, the DNC needs to radically reorganize the process. It might even be a good idea to make the results explicitly based on the clearly counted total of the popular vote. At this point, we don’t even know for sure what that total is.