Should "Close" Get a Cigar?

Twelve hundred thirty-seven.

That is the magic number.  In the history of the human race, the number 1,237 has not been invoked anywhere near as frequently as it has in the past few months, with the possible exception of the year 1237 A.D., and there's no telling if it compares even to that.

The number 1,237 is, as most Americans know, the number of delegate votes needed to achieve the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate race.  It is a number that, at this point, it seems a bit unlikely will represent actual, awarded delegate votes from the primary and caucus season ongoing, committed by the start of the convention to any one candidate.

Does it matter?  I am of a mind to say that the real question is what the totals will look like going in.  If someone -- and we won't mention any names, but his initials are "Donald Trump" -- has a certain number close to, but not at, the 1,237 delegates, then what should the convention do?

Let me start with this.  As I wrote not all that long ago, any suggestion that the Republican voter will scream and run away because of the split between the candidates is vastly exaggerated.  Remember that whoever gets the nomination will be running against as corrupt a candidate in Hillary Clinton as has run for national office in recent memory.  Or maybe Joe Biden, if Hillary is in prison by then.

So it is not as much about November as panicked party leaders think, or that the gleeful press expects it to be.  It is really all about who the ultimately selected candidate actually is. How we get to that point is less relevant because, contentious as it may be, a contested convention will not make anyone tolerate Hillary any more than they did before.

Back to the point.  Suppose that one candidate has 1,236.  Or maybe 1,235.  Or 1,136.  What ought the convention to do?

Well, I believe that it will actually be somewhat irrelevant.  That is because there are at least a couple hundred delegates who will go to the convention unpledged to any candidate even for the first ballot.  I think it is pretty easy to say that as many as half of those unpledged delegates -- certainly 50-60 at a minimum -- will regard it as important that the nomination not go to a second ballot, where "anything can happen."  I mean, maybe I don't think multiple ballots will harm the party, but others do.

If that is the case, and if we add the factor that at least 50-60 would regard that as being important even if Trump is the one leading the delegate count, then the number 1,237 becomes quite a bit less a factor for going into the convention with pledged delegates.  If you follow, I'm saying that some of the "mathematical certainty" or "mathematical impossibility" stuff becomes far more fuzzy.

I don't know if the number of the 200-ish unpledged delegates who would change their position and switch to Trump is 50-60, or more like 100.  But if you factor that into the delegate math as it sits today, after the New York primary, then it becomes far less incumbent on Trump to get to Cleveland with 1,237 commitments, right?

To me, that is a good thing.  I'm going to vote for the Republican in November, for a host of reasons easily gleaned if you just read this site back to 2014.  I don't know if Donald Trump is exactly the guy out of the three remaining candidates that I would most want to see in the White House.  But even though he may not get to Cleveland with enough delegates, if -- and this is still an "if" given the Cruz success in the primaries just before New York -- Trump is reasonably close, the convention needs to recognize the extent to which the Republican primary voters have expressed a preference.

I'll happily say that 1,100 committed, pledged delegates are not enough for the convention to concede, and hand the nomination to Trump.  But 1,236 sure are.  The concession number is somewhere in between.  As I said, it won't matter if it is 1,236; someone will make it 1,237.  But the convention will need to start thinking more and more about the will of the voter, the closer the final pledged number is to 1,237.

Otherwise, 2016 may feel disturbingly like 1237.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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