The mistaken notion that Puerto Rico will hold a winner-take-all primary was debunked months ago. Still, today on Wolf Blitzer's Late Edition, Senator Schumer repeated this untruth and of course Wolf did nothing to challenge him.
This matters because Puerto Rico is no small contest. 63 delegates will be up for grabs and if it was indeed winner-take-all, it would be perhaps the most influential primary in the entire country. As a key adviser, Schumer should know that it's not the case, especially if his argument is what a boon it will offer Hillary. But Wolf should know too, and call him on it when he perpetuates the false notion that there is a chance for her to significantly close the pledged delegate gap when in fact there is not.
Puerto Rico is a proportional primary like all the rest.
[UPDATE: Here's the transcript of the exchange.
BLITZER: All right. Here are the delegate counts, the estimates that we have, Senator Schumer. I'll put them up on the screen right now.
For Barack Obama, he has 1,724 delegates. That includes both the pledged and the superdelegates. Hillary Clinton has 1,589.
It's almost certain -- and correct me if I'm wrong, Senator Schumer, that he'll wind up with more pledged delegates. The question is, who will get more of those superdelegates? And in the end, who will reach the magic number of 2,025?
SCHUMER: Right. Well, I think you're right. I do think the number of even pledged delegates is going to narrow. I think Hillary is going to do better in the upcoming primary contests and catch up a little bit. And the one that people often forget is Puerto Rico. It's the last one. It's on June 3rd. It's 63 delegates, I think it is, and it's winner-take-all. She's way ahead in the polls there.
So, even assuming that all of the delegates that are pledged in these primaries break evenly -- and I don't think that will happen -- then you have a margin of 60 or 70 in the superdelegates. There are 300 of them. They could go either way.]
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