I’m not positive McCain can clinch tomorrow. The MSM delegate counts count all delegates and still are too high. He needs 317 pledged delegates to ice it no matter how he screws up in the next 6 months. All 88 Ohio delegates are unpledged. 137 pledged are available in Texas. RI and VT have 17 each.
Okay, maybe he won’t clinch it tomorrow, but it’s like leading in the Super Bowl 52-10 with five minutes left to go.
It’s like Don Meredith singing on Monday Night Football, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over...”
The Ohio Delegates are not legally required to vote for their candidate. But they ARE assigned to their candidates, which means the people who will go to the convention are the people who the CANDIDATES have chosen as their most loyal supporters.
It would be like sending McCain’s wife to the convention as “unpledged”. She might be legally allowed to vote for someone else, but the only way you are getting her to vote for someone else is if McCain has actually dropped out of the race.
It is not really useful to divide candidates based on “pledged” and “unpledged”. The important distinction is whether the delegates are committed supporters of the candidate, or truly free agents.