Despite Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in Kentucky, Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination.
Clinton won Kentucky by more than 30 points, but Obama’s share of the state’s 51 delegates was enough put him over the threshold, according to CNN estimates.
Obama is expected to pick up at least 14 delegates in Kentucky, and by CNN estimates, that will give him 1,627 of the 3,253 pledged delegates at stake in all of primaries and caucuses.
The Democrats have four key concerns regarding their current presidential primary elections.
The first is the integrity of their candidate selection process as spelled out in the rules that are in-place to govern their primary process. If they do something that appears to not follow those rules, then those feeling wounded or disadvantaged by that “something” will be displeased, even outraged.
The second is the electability of the candidate that will be selected by the process. The votes cast during the Dermocrat primary were cast over several months, a period during which the relative popularity of the two remaining, vying candidates seems to have changed on a broad-scale and during which polarization, some might say highly partisan polarization, seems to have occurred within the Democrat Party.
The third is the electability, throuhout the total U.S. general electorate, of the two vying candidates. There seems to be evidence that the electability of one candidate has been rising while that of the other has been plateauing or even fallen.
The fourth is the concept of populism, i.e. “the majority rules,” among many Democrats. One candidate is claiming victory on the basis of the votes won during the state primary process while the other candidate is claiming to have won a majority of the total votes cast while also claiming to be the most electable candidate.
# 1: Your second point in particular highlights the foolishness of the current interminable primary season. A selection held over 5 or 6 months is ridiculous. It should all be done in 6-8 weeks in May-June, so there is no or little ‘buyer’s regret’.
Clinton has taken Kentucky, but I doubt she can win KY’s vote in the fall, even though the state is strongly Democratic. She won even though Obama pushed hard here for the nomination (his signs are everywhere!). That suggests her win was a vote against Obama more than a vote in her support.
Alice,
Everywhere in Lexington and Louisville, which Obama carried, maybe. But Obama’s campaign devoted a comparatively limited amount of resources to Kentucky as a whole, in effect acknowledging Clinton’s impending victory well in advance of yesterday.
So, with Obama only minimally contesting the Commonwealth, I am not sure what conclusions you can draw from the primary election (although, I too doubt that either Clinton or Obama could come close to winning KY in the fall).