Sanders Can Win the Democratic Presidential Primary — Here’s How

https://revolutionaryds.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/sanders-can-win-the-democratic-presidential-primary-heres-how/

The 2008 Democratic presidential primary fight proved that the Clinton machine can be beaten despite enjoying enormous advantages in terms of funding, connections, and name recognition. The question is: can Bernie Sanders repeat in 2016 what no one thought possible in 2008? Although Sanders can’t mechanically follow candidate Barack Obama’s playbook, team Sanders has to adapt some of that playbook’s strategic principles to have a shot at winning.



Hillary Clinton lost the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2008 to Barack Obama by the thinnest of margins despite winning the popular vote because Obama won slightly more pledged delegates during the race than she did — 1,828.5 to her 1,726.5.

Pledged delegates are awarded to presidential contenders based on how well they do in the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses1 held in the country’s 435 Congressional districts as well as the District of Colombia and U.S. territories in a total of 57 contests. Clinton’s attempt to override the results of the process that gave Obama a slim majority of pledged delegates by appealing to current and former Democratic Party officeholders (the so-called superdelegates) failed. Superdelegates were not about to risk a fight on the convention floor with furious Obama supporters and throw the party into disarray on the eve of the general election campaign to make a winner out of a loser. As Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and superdelegate put it at the time: “If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what’s happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic Party.”

To become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee the way Obama did in 2008, Sanders needs to win approximately 1,885 pledged delegates2 — that is, 50% of all pledged delegates plus 1. The number of pledged and unpledged delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright is 2,242.

Like Obama, Sanders must use the quirks of the pledged delegate system to gain advantage. For example, Clinton won 50.8% of the vote statewide in Nevada to Obama’s 45.1% but Obama ended up with 14 of the state’s pledged delegates to Clinton’s 11. How did that happen? Only one-third of any state’s pledged delegates are awarded on the basis of statewide election results; the remaining two-thirds of a state’s pledged delegates are divided among its Congressional districts. So while Obama lost the statewide popular vote, he won a greater number of district contests and accumulated a greater number of pledged delegates. Just because a state goes to Clinton doesn’t mean that the majority of the state’s districts will follow.