Right now Clinton has a more than 30,000 lead among Democrats who have voted in the primaries, including Florida and Michigan, according to NBC and RealClearPolitics.

Of course it would be unfair to count Michigan, but if they have a Do-Over in both states and Hillary wins both and also Pennsylvania, a Clinton popular vote win will be a real possibility. Certainly this seems to be Clintons best hope to win the nomination. She can't win the elected delegates, but if she wins the popular vote, the she will have an agrument with the Super Delegates.

 The figures from NBC are:
Including Florida And Michigan, Clinton wins by 30,657:
Clinton 13,521,832
Obama 13,497,175

In the Approved Contests: Obama wins by 598,266
Obama 12,920,961
Clinton 12,322,695

With Florida, where both were on the ballot, Obama wins by 303,494 votes:
Obama 13,497,175
Clinton 13,193,681

In Florida, it was kind of cool to see a primary with no campaigning. No money spent at all. Everyone on the ballot.

I don’t see why these 2 million votes shouldn’t count, now or in the future, – except to punish the Democratic voters of Florida, who really didn’t schedule the early primaries. The Republicans Governor and legislature scheduled the early vote and forced the Democrats to go along. Another interesting idea floated by Sen. Bill Nelson is to hold a mail in presidential primary.

Democrats should also be very wary of turning off Florida voters – a significant swing state that decided the last two presidential elections.

In Michigan, Obama supporters urged people to vote the uncommitted line, which may have been larger, or smaller, had Obama’s name been on the ballot. The betting is that Michigan will hold a new caucus.

Florida has 210 delegates at stake, and Michigan has 156.

What is fair? We should probably have new primaries in Florida and Michigan, and see how they come out. If nothing is done, one side is going to feel very aggrieved and the Democrats may lose the general election to the Republicans. 2.1 million Democrats cast votes in the Florida primary.

If the Super Delegates are going to be guided by the popular vote, we might as well get a good idea of what that popular vote is.

Considering that Clinton is favored in the Pennsylvania primary, it is likely that she will end up winning the popular vote.  Or maybe not. In either case should the Super Delegates be bound by the result of the popular vote, as many in the Obama camp have been arguing?

Complicating all this is the fact that much of the popular vote came from caucuses, which on the one hand may not be fair to Hillary – since her older voters don’t want to spend two hours arguing about who they are going to vote for – but on the other hand may not be fair to Obama, since caucus voters often only represent a small fraction of total Democratic registrants in the state. One figure I saw stated that only one in twenty registered voters comes to the caucuses. So caucus voters are over-represented in the delegate vote and under-represented in the popular vote.

One solution might be to have a re-vote in Michigan and Florida and allow no campaigning.  No Television. No Radio. No Newspaper ads. No ground operation. Maybe one more debate. There has already been more campaigning this cycle than in any other primary in history. People should know by now who they are going to vote for.

This would be a novel experiment in how to take the money out of politics.

Campaign contributions, of course, have been perverting and grossly distorting the political process for decades, as Obama has said many times.

Another idea that has been floated is a “firehouse” contest in Michigan in May or June, which would involve fewer polling places and shorter hours. What we need is a really rich guy, how about it Bloomberg or Soros? ... to come up with the money --- $25 million --- to show the rest of the world that democracy can work in the US.

Ironically, Florida and Michigan flouted the rules because they wanted to have more of an influence in choosing the next President. Now with a possible Do-Overs looming, they may be the decisive primaries.

It’s a crazy way to choose a president, but we ought to follow the will of the people, as much as we can. It will make the party stronger and work to repair the US reputation --- after the 2000 Election Florida chad debacle.