About the upcoming transition to general election season

[Lord Magus]

494. That's not how it works and that's never been how it works.

There's no Democratic nominee until the convention, period. No matter what the delegate counts are. There is no "requisite number of pledged delegates" to be the nominee, there's a requisite number of delegates, period. Even if a candidate had won 100% of the pledged delegates, they still wouldn't be the nominee until they actually get nominated at the convention. It's not just the superdelegates who don't vote until the convention, it's all delegates. While the pledged delegates are bound to vote for whichever candidate won them, they haven't actually voted yet either. And technically their votes aren't set in stone yet either; a candidate does after all have the option of releasing their pledged delegates. At which point they would become equivalent to superdelegates; even if a candidate releases their delegates and encourages them to support somebody else, that's only a suggestion and not binding.

All of this is why the term "presumptive nominee" exists.