Which superdelegates?

Obama is now leading Clinton in every category of elected superdelegate -- Representatives, Senators, and Governors. He trails in Distinguished Party Leaders (ex-Presidents, ex-chairs of the DNC, ex-Speakers, etc.), by 10 to 4, and in DNC members by 145 to 119. The DPLs are small numbers, so the DNC members are the real meat of it. So Obama is leading in pledged delegates and in superdelegates who were elected to their positions. How "unelected" can the superdelegates choosing the nominee be? We'll find out.

Philip Roth was always first

The Wall Street Journal has a piece on unconventional baseball thinking. I really like the idea of putting pitchers in the outfield for positional matchups. At the end, the Brewers owner complains that he can't get people to try the idea of starting with a relief pitcher, then switching to the starting pitcher later. Wonder if he got the idea from the Great American Novel? From page 368:

Start with a "relief pitcher" who works approximately two innings . . .

80 more superdelegates

The fabled "leaked spreadsheet" predicts that Obama is going to pick up another 208 delegates over the coming contests. While it was off by one delegate in Pennsylvania, let's take it to be fairly accurate for the time being -- let's round down, and say Obama will pick up 200 more delegates from these contests. Demconwatch has Obama at 1727 total delegates right now. With another 200, he's at 1927, or 98 delegates away from the nomination. Let's say 100. There are still over 22 add-on delegates from states that Obama won that select their add-ons at the state-level convention (where Obama supporters will be in control). This is only counting 1 delegate from each such state: for instance, I'm only counting 1 add-on from Virginia, even though it has 2.

All this is to say that, if Obama gets 80 more non-add-on superdelegate endorsements, the add-ons alone will almost certainly put him over the top. It may take until June 21st, when Nebraska picks its add-on, but as soon as 80 more come in, it's a done deal.

Food shortages = better info for travelers

In perhaps the best news about the looming global famine, Singapore is trying to publicize cheap food stalls -- S$2, or about USD$1.50. The list is up. Average Singapore food stall meals are around S$4, so while this isn't a huge amount of money we're talking about, it's useful if you're trying to stuff yourself to the brim during your four hour layover in the city. I recommend the pig organ soup. No, seriously. It's really good.

How many superdelegates are left?

Demconwatch says that there are 304 superdelegates left (always not including FL or MI). However, as a commenter on their site points out, 65 of them are add-ons, that is, they will be chosen state-by-state, and presumably the bodies that choose them will choose them to accord with the bodies' preferences. (It varies by state who chooses.) The consensus seems to be that the add-ons will roughly reflect the way that the states voted (Maine, Utah, and California, for instance, have said that). If we knock those off, there are under 250 uncommitted superdelegates remaining. Taking away superdelegates who will endorse once their states' primary is run (Montana, for instance), we're left with somewhere above 200 named, uncommitted superdelegates, some of whom, like Howard Dean, are not going to publicly commit.

What's the significance of this? Assuming Obama and Clinton split the add-ons, and endorsements by superdelegates whose states have not voted yet also split, Clinton is going to have to win something like 2/3 of the remaining delegates to pull ahead. In other words, the 300 uncommitted superdelegates the candidates are wooing is really much more like 200.

Ayers, popular vote nonsense - from Sekhar

Articles about the popular vote nonsense are below. The popular vote idea is so silly it works only because the Clintons are involved. If Obama were behind and tried to bring up an issue like this, he would be laughed off. Since many states use a caucus system, there is no way to compare a caucus vote with a primary vote - Minnesota and Missouri have the same number of delegates but the number of votes in the Minnesota caucuses were only one-fourth the number of votes cast in the Missouri primary. I think this is the main reason the "popular vote" appears closer than the delegate count where his lead is about 160 out of 2,800. Even otherwise, the Prime Minister is chosen by MP's, not on the basis of which party got more votes; and Test series and baseball/basketball series are not decided on the basis of total runs or points scored.

It is also interesting that Clinton's losses between Ohio and Pennsylvania are not mentioned; it is as if she keeps winning. Wyoming and Mississippi have disappeared from media consciousness. On May 6, if Clinton should win Indiana, that will be a bigger deal than Obama winning by a much bigger margin in North Carolina with a much bigger population (115 delegates to 72).

Kos attacks the lie that Clinton is winning in popular vote. He and Mark Nickolas at politicalbase go through the Clinton campaign's statements in favor of delegates over the last few months, changed now that they are losing in delegates.

Also, here are some Ayers-related articles: Chicago mayor Richard Daley defends Obama and Ayers. So does the Chicago Tribune, which also has a profile of him. The Chicago media in general doesn't care. Some photos with Ayers as well.

Superdelegate misconception

Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, in a CQ article on superdelegates:

He also rejected the suggestion that publicly undecided superdelegates start declaring themselves now as a way of wrapping up the nomination race. “What if the undecided go 50-50? You’re in the same position,” Hoyer said.

This is just not true. If all the undecided superdelegates declared now, and at least 120 (out of 300) went for Obama, he would win the nomination by June. In fact, he would probably win the nomination by May. Saying that superdelegates will "decide" the race only means that they could make either Obama or Clinton the winner, not that if they favor one candidate, that candidate will win. Clinton has to be favored by a significant margin of superdelegates, because Obama has a significant margin of pledged delegates.

What he said

Dylan Loewe, at the Huffington Post on how the race is over.

Metrics, and May 6

The Daily Kos "letter" linked below makes a good point -- popular vote is a really bad way to choose a primary candidate, given the vagaries of the different states' voting systems. PocketNines, the author, brings out the absurdity of Missouri's popular vote margin counting far more than Minnesota's, because of the caucuses. Wisconsin is another good example. Obama won Wisconsin by 17%, and netted 193k votes from it. He won Minnesota by 34%. Even if he'd won Minnesota by the Wisconsin margin, he would have netted more votes than he's netted in all the caucus states combined.

But what is the point of all these ways of judging who's on top? The issue all along has been, will there be any conceivable way that the remaining undecided superdelegates can tip the election to Clinton without provoking a civil war in the party? The answer is no. Is there a way that the undecided superdelegates can tip the election to Obama without provoking a civil war? Yes. They can do what they're doing -- trickle in for the candidates, making as little an impact as possible. We're down to 305 undecided, according to demconwatch.

But given that the superdelegates are not going to tip the election to Clinton, what is the point of her staying in? We can speculate, but the fact remains, Clinton is going to stay in until she is forced out. How can that happen? If the superdelegates tip the election to Obama. So the question will be, at what point is the decision made that the harm being done to the party (and Obama, the eventual nominee) outweighs the bad feelings of the superdelegates running Clinton out? I think that point comes on May 6. Assuming Obama performs to expectations in NC, after May 6, Clinton will once again be over 600k votes down, and more than 150 delegates down. At that point, Clinton supporters may realize the inevitable, along with the media, allowing the superdelegates to act without repercussions. The point of the popular vote analysis below, and other calculations of this kind, is not to legitimize Clinton camp arguments, but to show that, no matter what, there is no way to give the nomination to Clinton without overturning "the will of the people," any reasonable way you define it.

PA primary analysis - from Sekhar

Obama did not do as well as his supporters hoped for, but better than in early polls, whatever that means. Clearly, Clinton has a solid base, especially among non-college-educated whites. She got 64% of high school graduates, who made up 23% of the electorate. Blacks made up 13% of the electorate. If two-thirds of them are high school graduates and Obama got 90% of their vote, it doesn't leave too many votes for him in the white high school graduates. Questionnaire results from the NY Times.

The net effect on delegate count is pretty small - Clinton got 84 delegates and Obama 74. Two weeks from now are North Carolina and Indiana.

Andrew Sullivan points out that white women are still the Clinton stronghold. Matthew Yglesias takes issue with the claim that Obama can't expand his coalition, and also points out that NC matters. Sullivan quotes Dick Morris on how the structure of PA favored Clinton. Daily Kos has a "letter" to Obama surrogates urging them to attack the concept of the popular vote being important. Sullivan mentions this New Republic piece on Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager -- his delegate predictions from February have been dead on. Tom Hayden wants to know why Clinton is disowning her roots.

What Clinton needs now

With the results still settling, it looks like Clinton will have picked up an inconsequential 12 delegates from PA, as well as a bit under 200k in the popular vote. Note that NC alone is going to undo both of those gains.

Going by the pollster.com averages for all the remaining states (which are almost certainly going to tighten -- in Kentucky, she's ahead by 32%, which is way too high a lead for anyone not named Barbaro), and the turnout averages for the states so far, she ends up down about 200k at the finish without counting caucus estimates, Michigan, or Florida. Including caucus estimates and Florida, it's a squeaker -- Obama may be up 20k, or maybe he's down a few hundred votes. This assumes she wins PR by 13%, that the turnout in PR is 2 million, as it was in 2004 for the governor's race, that she wins Oregon, etc.

As the polls tighten, her ending deficit will go up and up. Basically, she's in the same position as before in terms of what she needs to win, but now even blowouts aren't enough to carry her over the top without Florida. We'll see whether Dems buy the argument that the popular vote in Florida should count, even if the delegates don't.

Beating the spread

Obama said that losing by less than 10 in Pennsylvania would be a victory. The final tallies are going to be 55% Clinton, 45% Obama. Looks like he didn't make it -- or did he? He may have -- Clinton looks awfully close to getting less than or equal to 54.74%, with Obama getting 45.26%. Note that 54.74-45.26=9.48%, which rounds down to 9%. As I write this, Clinton has 54.69% with 99% of the votes counted, so if that holds, then Obama accomplished his goal of finishing within 10. Of course, looking at the 55-45 numbers, you'd say the difference was 10. But that's like taking 5.47, rounding to 5.5 because 7 is more than 5, and then rounding to 6. They finished 55-45, but the difference was 9. Math is weird, huh.

Better update: Talking points memo points out the above, as well as claiming that the AP's numbers are probably better than the official returns, at least for now. Since both sets of numbers are below 54.74% for Clinton, the analysis above stands. They're both above 54.5% also, although the official returns are at 54.587%, so conceivably that could shift below 54.5%, at which point it would become a 54/46 result, with rounding.

Update: The PA official election returns seem to be at least as complete as CNN's, and they have Clinton with 54% and Obama with 46% -- the spread is beaten anyway! Of course, since Clinton has 54.3% and Obama has 45.7%, the margin is actually 8.6%, so Clinton wins by 9%, not the 8% you would think from a 54-46 split.

Bloomberg is wrong, but Clinton still needs help

Zach noted a Bloomberg article about the impossibility of Clinton catching Obama. But it makes the silly, silly mistake of assuming that around 1 million people will vote in Puerto Rico, because that's how many voters in the last election were "Democratic-leaning." Poppycock. It's an open primary. Neither PR party is "Democratic" or "Republican." And, just in case people forget, 2 million people voted in 2004. I would be willing to bet a fair amount of money that 2 million people vote in PR, unless the race is completely over by then. Maybe even in that case. Imagine if you never got to vote for President, and then, all of a sudden, you did, and it would decide everything.

To do this number-crunching, there's no need for a Bloomberg article -- just go to Jay Cost's calculator at realclearpolitics. You can see that, if Pennsylvania gets 2 million voters today, and they go for Clinton by 15%, and she wins by 20 in PR, and everything else breaks her way, she could conceivably pass Obama if you don't count caucus estimates.

This will all be settled tonight, though, probably. If Clinton doesn't beat Obama by about 300,000 votes, her popular vote hopes are toast. In other words, Clinton needs not a 10-point victory, but a 15-point victory and record turnout. Anything else, and she's done. And note that high turnout might well favor Obama, since it will likely mean that the new Democrats (who disproportionately back Obama) are making an impact.

What to Expect in Penn

So rather than rely on the silly averages done by RCP and Pollster, here are the last polling results done in Pennsylvania before today (from most recent to least):

• Zogby: Clinton +10
• Rassmussen: Clinton +5
• Insider Advantage: Clinton +10
  
• Suffolk: Clinton +10
• Public Policy Polling: Obama +3
• Strategic Vision: Clinton +7
• Quinnipiac: Clinton +7
• SurveyUSA: Clinton +6
• American Research Group: Clinton +13
• Mason-Dixon: Clinton +5
  

As in all elections, the results tonight will depend on turnout. In fact, the difference in the polls above are almost entirely on how they predict turnout.

Clinton Needs Record Margins, Turnout to Catch Obama

Catherine Dodge and Kristin Jensen over at Bloomberg have a good piece today about the relative impossibility of Clinton matching Obama in the popular vote:

After more than 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses, Obama, the Illinois senator, leads Clinton by more than 800,000 votes. Even if the New York senator wins by more than 20 percentage points tomorrow -- a landslide few experts expect -- she would still have a hard time catching him....

To earn that split decision, though, Clinton would need a 25-point victory in Pennsylvania, plus 20-point wins in later contests in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Even that scenario assumes Clinton, 60, would break even in Indiana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon -- a prospect that's not at all certain.

Not at all certain? I assume they mean almost impossible, assuming Barack's campaign doesn't somehow implode. Obama has been consistently polling 13+ points over Clinton in North Carolina and looks to handily take S.D. and Oregon (although polling has been sparse). Additionally, Obama has about 5 times the amount of cash on hand, something that will all but prevent a 20 point win in any of those Clinton-must-dominate states (maybe with the exception of Puerto Rico). Anyway, more from Bloomberg:

More than just big margins, Clinton would need record voter turnout too. In Pennsylvania, she would need a turnout of 2 million, about half the state's registered Democrats; in the 2004 primary, about 800,000 voted. She would also need turnout to almost double in other states where she leads, and reach some 1 million in Puerto Rico, which is about how many Democratic- leaning voters went to the polls in a 2004 gubernatorial election. The territory, known for its high turnout, didn't have a presidential primary that year.

In Pennsylvania -- where a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll gave her just a five-point margin last week -- Clinton would need to win a strong majority of the state's suburban voters, about half of male voters, three-quarters of the rural vote and probably 70 percent of white voters, says Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. She would also have to erode Obama's strength among black voters and college students...

To shrink Obama's 800,000 popular-vote margin, the Clinton campaign argues for the inclusion of votes cast in Michigan and Florida... There's almost no chance that party officials will give credence to those results. ``No one is going to buy the argument that you have to count Michigan and Florida,'' says Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University in Washington. ``Those were not contested primaries.''

Instead, Clinton's slim prospects may rest on persuading enough of the 795 superdelegates that she has the better chance of defeating McCain... Polls on the general election don't support the case that Clinton would make the stronger national candidate; they show little difference in head-to-head match-ups between McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator and presumptive Republican nominee, and either Clinton or Obama.

Right... so what's the argument for staying in the race?

Bitter politics - no room for intelligence: from Sekhar

This week's brouhaha about Obama terming the white working class bitter makes clear once again that there is little room in US politics for thoughtful, intelligent analysis. What Obama said in San Francisco is quite close to what Thomas Frank said in "What Is Wrong with Kansas?" and what even Bill Clinton has said in the past - that poor whites often vote against their own self-interest. Obama went beyond Clinton did and said this was because neither political party did anything to help the poor. But neither the media nor, naturally, Obama's opposition want an intelligent conversation. Obama did defend himself for one day but has backed down since then to avoid getting stuck on a word. His speech in San Francisco and the defense in Indiana are both worth watching/reading. It is also interesting that Obama does not talk about a big reason poor whites may not vote for him - race. I begin with two interesting analyses of Clinton exploiting the issue by questioning Obama's Americanness, from the Jed Report, and by Jane Smiley.

Mayhill Fowler, who broke the "bitter" story, has audio and a partial transcript.

Obama responds in Indiana - video and transcript with link to video.

Obama said something similar four years back - video.

Dirt off his shoulders - from Sekhar

The ABC debate was ridiculous, the only positive aspect being that it was a preview of Republican attacks in the fall. Memorable: Clinton invoking 9/11 no less than three times; the moderators' view that people who make $200,000 a year ought not to pay higher taxes; their disapproval of Obama's reasonable approach to stabilizing Social Security (right now, people pay a percent of income but not for what they earn over $100,000; Obama would remove the cap).

Videos: a TalkingPointsMemo compilation of the worst. An Obama Jay-Z mix, called a mash-up I gather. Obama's reaction next day.

Articles: Clinton and 9/11 at Politico. The Nation goes into Obama's shoulder gesture. FAIR goes through the debate questions. The NY Times discusses Ayres. The Post hated the debate. Greg Mitchell (Huffington) and Will Bunch (Philadelphia Daily News) slam ABC and the moderators.

Krugman vs. Herbert (also reality)

Krugman is on fire these days. Here's his latest column, in which he attacks Obama's "bitter" remarks from the "left," claiming that Obama's analysis of religious-economic links is flawed. But then he hits his own downfall when he says that, rather than religion being a tool for the Republicans, some say:

the shift of the Solid South from Democratic to Republican control in the wake of the civil rights movement” explains all — literally all — of the Republican success story.

Huh. So you think maybe race is one reason some people won't vote for Obama? I wonder if that would be a touchy topic. Let's go to Obama's words:

. . . they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment . . .

See what he did there? "antipathy to people who aren't like them . . ." Maybe, just maybe Obama was trying to say, as delicately as possible, that some of these voters are racist. It's a topic he really doesn't like discussing, because it's been used by the Clinton campaign (see: Ferraro, Rendell, et al) to raise doubts about his electability, and it's just not something that needs to be in the national consciousness, but when he's directly asked, by a group of supporters, "Why can't some Pennsylvania voters be won over?" he tries to say, maybe it's race.

Now, this point of view is not original. For instance, Bob Herbert's last column, appearing on the very same page Krugman's column does in the NY times, said:

Maybe Barack Obama felt he couldn’t afford to give the correct answer. . . it’s pretty widely understood that a substantial number of those voters . . . will not vote for a black candidate for president

So has Krugman suddenly become blind to race? What's going on here? If you want to criticize Obama from the left, you have to acknowledge what he was really talking about. And what he was really talking about is real, and no matter how mangled or incorrect his formulation, you have to acknowledge that. Which Krugman never did.

Republicans really don't get it

The national communications director of McCain's 2000 campaign has a piece in a Times blog on how liberals are hypocritical for bemoaning the "economic-political disconnect" (my phrase) in low-income socially conservative voters (a la "What's the Matter with Kansas?"), while ignoring the same disconnect in high-income socially liberal voters. Seriously? Are you comparing the impact of a higher capital gains tax rate on someone who made $2 billion last year with the impact of cutting off food stamps and unemployment insurance, or spending $10 billion a month on the Iraq war ($400/month for every family in the U.S. -- now that would be a rebate)?

There's a case to be made that the economic prosperity of the U.S. has allowed socially conservative voters to neglect their economic interests. But during recessions/depressions? That's a different story.

Republicans heart Bush

The new AP poll shows Bush at 28% approval. 60% of self-identified Republicans approve of his job performance. That may be a new low, but it's still a pretty good majority. Something to think about next time someone mentions bipartisanship -- a solid majority of Republicans think Bush is doing a good job. You wonder, are these the same Republicans who run businesses? Because their talent evaluation skills don't seem so good.

David Pogue is really weird

From an article about small camcorders:

In a big elevator last week, my children began tickling each other, doubled over in laughter. The tiny Sony was in my coat pocket. I loved how it was ready to film nearly instantly when I opened the flip-out screen — (all three camcorders offer this standby mode).

Unfortunately, even when I mashed my back against the far wall of the elevator, all I got was the children’s faces. You couldn’t even see that they were tickling each other without panning down. It was supremely frustrating.

Please don't use the phrase "panning down" when describing your children.

first Puerto Rico poll -- via Jusiper

Jusiper, which might have the most Puerto Rico information of any English-language politics blog, has a link to the first poll in Puerto Rico -- Clinton 50, Obama 37, 13 undecided. Not that bad for Obama -- definitely better than the 25 points some people were assuming. Note that realclearpolitics doesn't have this up yet!

Humor of the day

Politics/basketball from endpoliticsasusual and war from the Onion.

realclearpolitics doesn't like ARG?

Anybody (all you millions of readers) know why realclearpolitics' poll average never includes American Research Group (ARG) polls? ARG seems sketchy in various ways, but why, specifically, did realclearpolitics decide to drop them?

Superdelegates

Demconwatch, of course, has the best superdelegate counter around. Obama has been catching up, slowly but surely, in recent days. But it's not from people deciding to endorse. It's just from the states choosing "add-on" delegates (this is explained over at talkingpointsmemo). The 76 add-on delegates are chosen in various ways by the states, but often the body choosing the delegates has a composition influenced by the state's vote. Thus, all these add-ons are (roughly) reflecting Obama's pledged delegate lead (although, since FlyOnTheWall thinks they'll mostly be allocated winner-take-all, they might actually give Obama extra, since he's won more states).

It's certainly not bad news for Obama, and he can hope that enough will come down the pipe that he might be ahead of Clinton in superdelegates as well as pledged by the time Pennsylvania votes, but these are a little bit different from the usual superdelegates-- they're less signaling accumulation in momentum than cementing victories that he's already won.

Clinton's popular vote hope: Puerto Rico

A blogger at realclearpolitics has an argument that Clinton has a reasonable chance of winning the popular vote. He has lots of fancy maps and arguments about the Appalachians, but that's actually mostly irrelevant. The main issue he points out is that Puerto Rico has extraordinarily high voter turnout (close to 2 million last election, with a total population of 4 million -- over 80% of registered voters participated).

Of course, it doesn't matter how many people vote if they don't vote for Clinton, and there's the rub. Basically, Clinton will need to pick up on the order of 400,000 votes (at least) from Puerto Rico. Even out of 2 million voters, that's a tall order -- 60/40 split. Can she do it? It's all just guessing until polls start coming out of there. But if they do, and they show Clinton with a 20+ point lead, then she does indeed have a shot of winning the popular vote nationwide, even without Florida and Michigan.

New Credentials Committee Issues

David Paul Kuhn at the Politico writes:

[The DNC announced that Florida and Michigan members] will be seated on the three standing committees -- including the critical Credentials Committee -- at the party's 2008 national convention, a position that could affect the selection of the Democratic nominee

While both states were stripped of their delegates to the convention, according to the DNC's interpretation of party rules, members from those states will be seated on the Credentials Committee. The Credentials Committee, which can meet prior to convention, resolves disputes over whether to seat delegates at the convention.

But the mere presence of Florida and Michigan on the credentials committee raises the prospect of vote-trading or last-minute maneuvering, creating potential confusion for a convention already shadowed by procedural controversies.

As Janak said, there's no real reason to believe that these representatives will force a full convention vote, but this news does not make the Credentials Committee as open and shut for Obama as it was according to traditional DNC Convention Rules.

trivia of trivias

The designer of the typeface used by the Obama campaign, Tobias Frere-Jones, is the brother of the New Yorker music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones. Note that the font, "Gotham," was not designed for the Obama campaign.

When the race will end

May 20.

By pledged delegates, Clinton is around 159 delegates down. Giving her the most favorable difference ratings in the upcoming states (and splitting Guam 2-2, not that it matters), Obama will have an insurmountable (i.e., more than all the remaining delegates) lead after the Oregon/Kentucky primaries on May 20 -- I'm giving her a pickup of 18 in Pennyslvania, 6 in Indiana, loss of 9 in North Carolina, pickup of 8 in West Virginia, 15 in Kentucky, and 4 in Oregon. These are all from the most favorable for her recent opinion polls in those states that I could find.

These numbers are pretty stable. It will be almost impossible for Obama to have an insurmountable lead before May 20, because there are 189 delegates assigned on or after May 20, and his lead would have to grow by 30 delegates before then, which is impossible unless Clinton simply collapses. It will also be almost impossible for Obama not to have an insurmountable lead after May 20, because after May 20 there are only 86 delegates left to be assigned, and his lead of ~160 isn't going to be halved with an assignment of 480 delegates -- that would require Clinton win two-thirds of the delegates.

All these are subject to Obama not being hit by lightning or being found out as a secret Buddhist, of course. But barring that, Obama's pledged delegate lead will be impossible to beat on May 20. Then there are 11 days before Puerto Rico votes. Since Puerto Rico isn't a state, and Montana and South Dakota are red states, and so don't "count," Clinton's camp should be ok with the superdelegates making their decision on May 21.

Credentials Committee counting

Clinton says she wants to fight on to the credentials committee decision on whether to seat Florida and/or Michigan. But would it be friendly to her at all? Nope. The credentials committee will be as pro-Obama as the convention delegates:

The rules of the DNC say (VII.C, page 10, page 18 of pdf) that membership on the Credentials Committee is proportional to statewide preference, with delegates given in Appendix D. I've made a spreadsheet with the results. So far, it's 67.5 for Obama, and 52.25 for Clinton (the territories get .25 votes each). One would expect him to hold this lead pretty much unchanged. He may lose 1 in Indiana (3 delegates), 1 in West Virginia (1 delegate), and maybe 2 in Pennsylvania (7 delegates), but he'll probably pick up in South Dakota and Montana (1 each). So look for Obama to be up by at least 12 in state-picked delegates, out of a total 183.

Mark Ambinder has a list of credentials committee members selected by Dean, and thinks they're mostly Dean loyalists. Thus, assuming Clinton doesn't get a 19-6 split in Dean's people (very unlikely), she will have a minority of the credentials committee, and will not be able to pass any proposal to seat Florida and/or Michigan delegates.

As Greg Sargent says, 20% of the committee can force a full convention vote, but that would probably cause havoc. Clinton would need a straight up/down majority to win, and you'd imagine the uncommitted superdelegates would take the easy way out and abstain.