What If Clinton Forces Second Convention Vote on Obama?

I am not by any means an expert on political convention procedures, Republican or Democrat, but I do know that somewhere in the process, if a first vote doesn't produce a clear nominee, pledged delegates are released to vote their own minds.

What happens to the ever so well-crafted numbers that the media has been throwing at us for months now if the first vote doesn't produce a nominee? What happens if Hillary Clinton gets enough delegates in the remaining primaries to deny Barack Obama the majority he needs to claim victory?

Yes, I am aware that the Democrats use "Super" delegates who ostensibly are free to vote their consciences, and that as of today Obama was claiming that he had more than Clinton.

But a lot can happen between now and convention time and Super Delegates are in play right up to the instant they vote. So that number can change overnight, and if Obama doesn't have enough committed delegates to get the nomination on the first vote, what happens next?

At what point do the committed delegates get released from their commitments, regardless of whether they are committed to Clinton or Obama?

Based on most of the opinions I have heard from the political scene in recent weeks, Clinton will win West Virginia handily, Kentucky by a decent margin, as well as Puerto Rico, with Oregon, Montana and South Dakota up for grabs.

So essentially, we'll finish up the Democratic primary season in something near a dead heat, with Obama a tiny bit ahead in the committed delegate count, but not over the top.

That however, doesn't include the primaries in Florida and Michigan that Clinton won but the Democrats aren't counting.

And please, don't bore me with this "Obama didn't run in Michigan" nonsense. Who's fault is that? Yeah, His!

How typically Democratic in concept. The man didn't do what he needed to do to win all the states regardless of the technicalities involved, so now he is a victim of his own system?

Obama doesn't get any Michigan numbers because he wrote that state off and that is too bad. But the Democratic party is cutting its own throat by excluding the opinions of millions of voters who could care less what the bigwigs in their party did with their primary schedules.

That is not helpful to Obama, nor is his "victim" attitude.

If you include Clinton's victories in Florida and Michigan in this count, the whole picture changes.

Obama's playing the race card repeatedly isn't helping him either. He won big in North Carolina because nearly half the Democratic voters in North Carolina are black, and 90+ percent of them voted for Obama.

But nationwide, blacks account for one-eighth of the population and while it certainly is desirable to have a large voting bloc in your camp, and the voice of African-Americans certainly should be heard and heeded, that percentage can't win on its own.

Here is the dirty little secret that most political newscasters and commentators don't want to address in their unending quest for political correctness.

White people by and large are pissed at Obama. Many whites would have voted for him early on. But first his wife bad mouths a country that gave her opportunities to excel in one of the most prestigious of Ivy League schools, and an annual income that is 10 times higher than most wage earners; then Rev. Jeremiah Wright goes out rapping smack about whitey and the USAKKK.

Then we find that his other associations are less than savory, what with federal trials involving close Obama friends and supporters, and unrepentant terrorists in his circle of backers.

White people, not white liberal Democrats, or even unaffiliated left-leaning voters, but run of the mill white people, many of whom often don't vote, are angry with Obama.

I don't see this as racist either! I believe there are huge numbers of white Americans who are more than willing to vote for a qualified black person, man or woman, as well as a woman of any race.

But they want qualified people representing them. They want people who really are post-racial, not just posturing and then displaying age-old racial stereotyping in private.

A wide range of viewpoints comes into this site or my emails every day, and even when I disagree with the authors, I heed where they come from and what kind of demographic they represent.

Virtually all of them are angry with Obama. He does not have the support of the veterans, he does not have the support of the active military, he doesn't have the support of non-Democrat blue collar workers especially independents, and what with his latest shot at John McCain's age, you can bet the senior citizens aren't going to be on his side either. They're seeing him as just another upstart who wants to discount and discard their years of sacrifices, contributions and knowledge and shove them off to the side whenever their votes aren't needed.

Frankly, not only do I not see Obama getting elected, if he is nominated I wouldn't be surprised to see a backlash vote against him from many fronts, including those who don't usually vote, and thus usually aren't included in the myriad polls the pundits use to try to tell us how to think.

I don't believe I am the only person out here who sees this. I believe Hillary Clinton's camp is well aware of it, even though her advisers say otherwise, as is Obama's. Neither has the best interests of the Democratic party in mind, so neither will give up unless they are down, out and still getting stomped.

So it is conceivable that we can see this fight go right to the convention floor, and regardless of the delegate count at the moment, it all can change in the super delegate numbers. That change could occur if the Democratic convention goes beyond the first ballot.