when i first heard about edwards' endorsement of obama yesterday, i didn't think it would make much difference in the race. i've long thought that endorsements are wildly overrated. there's very little evidence that they have much effect on a vote.
maybe edwards is a special case. he does seem to have a loyal following online (is it just me, or is edwards held in higher esteem by left blogistan since he dropped out than when he was actually running?). but even if the edwards endorsement is more powerful than one by your run-of-the-mill endorser by virtue of him being edwards, it seemed that the endorsement came too late to have much of an effect. to endorse now, after all the talk about how the contest is effectively over and clinton can't win, it seems more like jumping on the winner's bandwagon than an endorsement from the heart.
those were my thoughts about it yesterday. but i wasn't thinking about edwards' delegates. he has approximately 19 pledged delegates who are now free to commit to whoever they want. if you scroll down for the updates to the post i just linked to, you'll see that the pledged edwards delegates who have issued statements seem to be following edwards to obama. since this race is a race over delegates, not states or votes (despite how the press keeps reporting it), a shift of delegates is a real difference. so consider me flip-flopped from my initial won't-make-any-difference reaction.
one more thing: as you probably know, the clinton campaign has been lobbying to get the florida delegates to be seated. that's because clinton "won" florida in january. except that this race isn't like the electoral college. no one really "wins" a state just by getting the most votes because the delegates get assigned proportionately by district. thus, for example, although obama is said to have "won" missouri, he really didn't even though he got the most votes . this is a race over delegates and the missouri delegates split evenly 36 to 36. in other words, missouri was a tie. similarly, despite the fact that nevada is credited as a clinton "win", obama really "won" there because he got more delegates. (obama also technically "won" texas 99 to 94, despite his widely reported "loss" there). the problem is the press keeps talking about "winning" or "losing" a state as if it is who gets the most votes in the state that count, rather than who collects the most delegates. the press seems to treat the primary like the electoral college. but it's not the electoral college. it's a race for delegates, not states. it's a screwed up system, but that's the system we got.
getting back to my point, clinton is said to have "won" florida by getting 50% of the votes. obama and edwards split the remaining votes 33% to 14% (the few missing percentage points presumably went for "uncommitted"). i have no idea how the delegates would be allocated in florida if they counted. but if obama ends up getting the edwards delegates, it may be that clinton did not win the state after all. at the very least, the delegate split between clinton and obama/edwards would be very narrow.
don't get me wrong, i think seating the florida delegation is problematic. an election where people are told their vote won't count ahead of time is not a valid election. what i am saying is that if obama gets all the edwards delegates that would would mean that seating florida may not turn into the delegate bonanza that clinton has been counting on.
