As Barack Obama leaves Hillary Clinton further behind in election victories, her struggling campaign is trying to secure her nomination by forcing the inclusion of the Michigan and Florida delegates the party has discounted.
The Clinton camp is pitching a new strategy that gives her a path to victory even if Obama completes what most expect will be a monthlong sweep of elections leading to the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio.
“This is a nominating process that consists of caucus, primary and superdelegates and also the issue of the votes in Florida and Michigan that have to be resolved,” Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, said Wednesday.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe declared Wednesday that his candidate’s sweeping victories Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., have given him a clear lead over Clinton among caucus and primary delegates that would be “next to impossible” for her to eliminate.
Unless Clinton wins the heavy-delegate states of Ohio and Texas by margins of at least 20 percent, Plouffe said, she will remain behind in pledged delegates.
Without substantial victories in March, Clinton might not even be able to pull ahead if she sustains her lead among the hundreds of super-delegates — governors, members of Congress and party officials — needed for one of the candidates to reach the required 2,025 delegates and the nomination.
But Clinton could prevail if she succeeds in getting the Democratic National Committee to reverse its decision to discount the 313 delegates pledged in the January primaries in Florida and Michigan. Clinton won both of those contests decisively, although both agreed not to campaign in Florida and Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.
The party is discounting the results to penalize the two states for moving their contests before Feb. 5.
The DNC has urged the two states to hold caucuses to decide a winner but some state party officials have resisted.
“Our position is that the people of Florida and Michigan have already weighed in,” said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, who declined to say what the campaign is doing to try to reverse the decision.
University of Michigan political science professor Vincent Hutchings said Clinton’s attempt to seat the excluded delegates could gather support.
“The argument that the Clinton people are putting forth is that people voted and we should count those votes,” Hutchings said. “Is that really a disreputable position to adopt?”
