I'm not going to talk math, although I'm a math teacher.
The super delegates certainly can vote for whoever the hell they want, so until someone has the magic number, the race is not over.
However, I have to disagree with you about FL and MI. Here is my analogy as a math professor:
If I catch a 2 students breaking the rules on an exam, the grades they otherwise would have received are replaced with zeroes. These rules are well known in advance as published in my syllabus.
Sometime when they are caught, the students ask for a redo, but I don't do that as that would reward cheaters and would be unfair to the other 48 students in my class who followed the rules.
If these students don't like the rules or feel they were treated unfairly, they can always appeal to the Dean! (no pun intended)
the pun may not intended, but it is quite funny! kudos :)
I would say your analogy falls a little short, at least on Florida.
The Florida legislature (both houses) and the Governorship are in the control of the Republicans. The moving of the primary date to its early position was the result of Republicans putting it in as an amendment to popular legislation on voting reform to create a paper trail for elections. It was a political no-win for the Florida Democrats. If they opposed the legislation, it would still pass with a party-line vote and provide ripe political fodder against them in their next election.
Michigan, on the other hand, moved up their primary after Florida had already been admonished by the DNC. I'm unclear whether it was the Michigan Party or the legislature that moved the date, but the Democrats are in control of at least the Michigan House of Representatives, so, either way, the moving of their primary can clearly be seen as a more egregious violation of DNC rulings.
The final decision will lie with the Credential Committee, but the tendency to lump both FL and MI together, I think, misses the huge differences in the situations.
Personally, I'd say the DNC was right in initially chastising FL, if only to serve as a disincentive for other states to try and move up their primaries. However, considering the circumstances, their delegation should be recognized as decided by the primary. MI, on the other hand, I think should be possibly allowed to attend the convention, but not stand to vote until a candidate is definitively decided upon.
Then the DNC can spend the next 4 years(or hopefully 8, assuming we have an incumbent to defend in 2012) figuring out a better way to handle these primaries and to get rid of these ridiculous, antiquated caucuses.
Why do we have such silly rules? Did anyone expect that the DNC rules would control what state assemblies choose to do?
Why do we have the silly rule that NH and Iowa must go first? Did we all decide that? If so, why? Couldn't it be argued that other states, like Florida and Michigan, are more important than Iowan and New Hampshire? Who would we rather alienate? New Hampshire or Florida?
Our rules are just silly. They make no sense. We'll be fighting about this foolishness from now until August, if not November. It's just not helpful to our chances of winning in November. When will we learn to keep our eyes on the prize and not these silly rules?!
A FL Dem co-sponsored the bill to move up the primary date. The FL Dems were willing accomplices to this debacle.
FL votes should not count unless a re-vote can be done and the re-vote is done fairly and credibily.
Re, breaking the rules and receiving zeros.
The Clinton camp should have immediatly insisted that Obama forfeit the Florida delegates when ran TV ads in Florida. He broke the rules, and his pledge.
Yes indeed. And his illegal press conference after the fund raiser, during which he told Floridian voters that he would support their reinstatement at the convention, was also against the rules.
And yet now, he refuses to help those same Floridian voters he told that he supported them.
If Obama gets the nomination by manipulating these rules, he won't win Florida or Michigan.
And without those 2 states, he can't win for our party in November.
The RULES say superdelegates get to consider all of those issues, and as Tom Daschle said, "I'm a superdelegate. I can do whatever I want. "
what other states won't Obama win?
