Not only is it unfair to the 48 states that abided by party rules for the DNC Rules Committee to seat Florida and Michigan in full (never mind, it’s unfair to Obama, who simply followed the party rules), but apparently, it is also not legal. According to Democratic Party by-laws, Michigan and Florida must be stripped of at least half of their delegates for violating party nominating rules. This is exactly what the Republican Party has done to Florida and Michigan (as well as Wyoming, South Carolina and New Hampshire) that violated their party rules. For the Democrats, that means that no more than 106 Florida delegates and no more than 64 Michigan delegates can be seated. It is not clear whether superdelegates count, but I’m assuming they can be seated in full, since they are not tied to the primaries.

So I’m guessing the most likely outcome is that both states are seated at 50% strength, with Clinton awarded a share proportional to her vote and Obama awarded the remainder. In Michigan, this would lead to a 35-29 split in favor of Clinton. In Florida, this would lead to a 63-43 split in favor of Clinton. So, overall the split is 99-72 in favor of Clinton, a net gain of 27, cutting Obama’s current 197-delegate lead down to 170. It also moves the number of delegates required to capture the nomination from the current 2,026 to 2,111. After counting Florida and Michigan as above, the tally would be Obama 2,048 (1,731 elected, 317 super) and Clinton 1,877 (1,597 elected, 280 super). That would leave 282 yet to be decided (86 elected, 196 super). To win, Clinton would need 234 of those delegates or about 83%.

This isn’t going to happen. The polls are showing Obama up in Montana (16 delegates) and South Dakota (15) by at least 60-40, while Clinton is up in Puerto Rico (55) by a similar margin. This suggests that Obama would pick up 40-42 of the remaining 86 elected delegates. If so, Obama would need only about 20 of the remaining 196 superdelegates to win. In other words, even seating Florida and Michigan using the primary results but at 50% their strength (the maximum allowed by the DNC), Hillary would still need to win 90% of the remaining superdelegates. Given that Obama has been winning superdelegates at least 3-to-1 over the last few months, this is extremely unlikely, if not impossible.