The Morning Dose---3/29

Here's a new series, The Morning Dose,  which I would like to continue every few days, where I take an interesting article and simply post excerpts from it.  Instead of commenting on the article in my post, I'll let you, the reader, form your own opinion on it.  If necessary, I'll post a comment I have on it in the comments section.  

The Morning Dose today comes from Mark Ambinder, over at the Atlantic.  It's titled, How to Count the Popular Vote:

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So -- my fairly conservative calculation has Clinton netting about 446,000 votes between now and June 3. Under all scenarios that exclude Florida and Michigan votes -- and count the votes of Washington's primary -- Obama still retains a popular vote lead of not more than 330,000 -- or an advantage of less than one and a half percent.

Under a scenario that includes the Florida and Michigan votes for Clinton, gives Obama all of the uncommitted Michigan votes, estimates the votes for all the caucus states and includes the Washington primary, Clinton wins by about 16,000 votes -- or about a tenth of one percent.

Which scenario is "right?" Under DNC rules, until the credentials committee figures out which delegations to seat, Florida and Michigan do not exist. But the voters in those states certainly do in the existential sense -- and if we're answering the question by figuring out how many Democrats voted for Obama versus how many Democrats voted for Clinton.

Are there historical precedents? Well, Democrats like to count every vote. So -- advantage Hillary? But there has to be some tempering factor to account for Obama's name not being on the Michigan ballot. Ok, but then there has to be some tempering factor to account for the fact that Obama's campaign made the decision to stay off the Michigan ballot as least as much because they feared losing the state to Clinton as they wanted to make a statement to Iowans about the integrity of the calendar process.