Reply #24: You are ultimately right inthe assessment

[Gore1FL]

however, to think pledged delegate counts do not play a major, if not majority role in the decision making process is to think incorrectly.

Many things can bring a super delegate to the final personal decision. The super delegate's own electability after the decision, the candidate's the super delegate chooses favorite color, softdrink or radio station might play a hand in it.

It might be popular vote. It ight Popular vote plus some modifier * caucus vote totals., It might be number of caucus wins. It might be number of primary wins. It might be total number of states won. In might be how many states the candidate puts in play. It might be current GE polling. It might be who ran a better campaign, or more unifying campaign, or who is the best speaker. It might be the brand of luggage they use. It might the number of syllables in their name. It might be a freaking lot of things.

However if a large portion of the party who elected delegates by a specific and measured and agreed to allocation might get really pissed if a candidate with a substantial pledged delegate lead comes to a convention and loses. See, popular vote, and past voting turnout in the GE, electoral votes of the states, etc, are built into the dlegate allocations. To ignore a big lead, ignores a lot of important facts that go beyond the mere number of delegates--that number represents those facts.

So the it's over, do the math are not pointless, nor have they ever been satisfactorily countered. One would think if they could be countered they would have been rather than the dismissal as pointless.

When 60%+ of the super delegates have to come to a conclusion that counters all the factors that already are included in the pledged delegate count, then one can only consider such an outcome to be unlikely, at best. When the need for 60%+ is the best case scenario for the second place candidate the math argument gets a little stronger. When 56% of the Super delegates have already committed to one candidate or the other, and the ratio is for the second place candidate is significantly less for the second place candidate that is needed overall, the math gets even stronger.

Worse case scenario under curtrent conditions is Obama comes to the convention 100 pledged delegates ahead. Clinton in that scenario needs over 79% of those remaining to buy into the "big state popular vote where caucuses don't count" argument and forget the pre-measured facts of the pledged delegate allocation, and reverse the 6-monhs of contests leading up to the convention while doing so, is more than a little freaking optimistic. To assume that at least 79% of the Super Delegates don't understand the process, the fatrs of the pledged delegates, and the party consequences, is frankly pointless. For that "Best case 100 delegate lead I mentioned, Clinton has to win every one of the remaining primary by 6%, including at least 5 of which he is expected to win by much a larger margin than the 6% Hillary would have to win them by.

The math is a much better indicator than the what-if fantasies proposed by those unwilling to do or believe the math.

Name some Super delegates who you believe will make their decision unencumbered by the pledged delegate numbers,or who you believe do not understant the factos used in their allocation that they will easily dismiss them.