The prince and the frog

The most intense and drawn out primary contest imaginable finally draws to a close today as the final two states cast their votes. But when will the losing Democrat candidate concede?

The final two primary contests of this year’s marathon Democratic primary contest are scheduled for today. But although neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are likely to pick up sufficient delegates to see them clinch the nomination (see the numbers below), after the result we are likely to see floods of superdelegates pledge their support for Obama.

DELEGATE COUNT
Total delegates: Obama, 2,071; Clinton, 1,915
Super-delegates: Obama, 333; Clinton, 290
Winner needs 2,118 delegates
Puerto Rico’s elected delegates: Clinton, 38; Obama 17
South Dakota and Montana have 31 elected delegates between them

The question is, therefore, when will Hillary finally bow out? Most experts think that she could go gracefully when Obama hits the magic number of delegates, but there is a chance that she might still fight a rearguard action to see the compromise solution of half delegates awarded to Michigan and Florida converted into full delegates.

To bring you up to speed if you missed this one, at the weekend a Democratic Party committee (the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee) determined that the votes won by candidates in the two states that were punished for bringing their primaries forward would be counted and the states’ delegates would attend the party convention but would only have half votes. Clinton, remember, won both states. The compromise gave 69 delegates to 59 for Michigan in Clinton’s favour, and in Florida she won 105 delegates against Obama’s 67.

So what Hillary will do is anyone’s guess since she has said little to her staffers other than they should put in a claim for their expenses. This could mean that she will give up the ghost later this week, or it could be a simple admission that she has no more money left. She herself said cryptically that “You can’t tell how far a frog will jump until you punch him.”

Whatever that means.