In the spirit of my previous post, I'm not much interested for now in the elected-delegate count. I'm trying to keep tabs on the popular vote, on the theory that this will carry great weight with the superdelegates. As I write, only two-thirds of the Texas votes are in, but it looks as though Obama might eke out a narrow win there, to set against Hillary's comfortable--though not crushing--win in Ohio. In terms of the popular vote, Vermont and Rhode Island will roughly cancel out. My back of the envelope (please don't hold me to this) says that Hillary is on course to win a little over 53 percent of the votes cast on Tuesday, trimming Obama's overall lead on that measure from roughly 900,000 to around 600,000. If she performs this well in the remaining primaries taken together, she would just fail to win a majority of the popular vote--excluding Florida. Add Florida back in, and she is almost exactly on schedule to tie the popular vote.
Whatever happens, she is not going to have a majority of elected delegates by the convention. But if she does as well as she did tonight or better for the rest of the nomination race, and if you count Florida (but not Michigan), she will have a case to put to the superdelegates. So the race goes on--and without a doubt it will be an increasingly bitter one.
All in all, a good night for Republicans.
Update:
Hillary is projected to win Texas narrowly. Let's say 53.5 percent of the popular vote, reducing Obama's lead to a little under 600,000. A further boost to morale and momentum, of course. But I think the rest of what I said stands.
Further update:
As I retire for the night I notice that the popular vote tally now puts Hillary ahead of Obama, so long as you add both Florida and Michigan (where, you recall, Obama was not on the ballot). Including Florida but not Michigan, Obama is about 300,000 votes ahead. Excluding both Florida and Michigan, he is a little less than 600,000 votes ahead.
Jeez Louise.
Consider apples and oranges, please. Some states have chosen to have caucuses and others primaries. I don't believe that the citizens of the caucus states were warned that by holding caucuses they would be, shall we say, disenfranchised. But this is precisely the outcome if we start treating a lead in the collective popular vote as if it should determine the nominee. (Under such a "system," a modestly large caucus state such as Washington would have less clout than one many times smaller, if the latter happened to hold a primary.) For better or worse, we now have a delegate system, and one which allows both caucuses and primaries.
Moving to a general popular vote at this juncture, while seemingly fair, would actually be changing the rules. We need to nip this one in the bud before we further undermine an already overburdened primary process.
The Media has an obligation to start pointing this out now, and not feed the idea that the popular vote should determine the nominee.
Then why vote? If Clinton wins this, I'm done voting in any presidential election.
I sick of political bullies running this country but feel disenfranchised.
Washington is actually a particularly interesting example; they had a caucus, but they also had their regular state primary a week later. The regular primary included a completely non-binding "beauty contest" presidential preference question. Obama only got 51% in the presidential preference in the primary, despite winning the caucus handily.
I think you're somewhat missing the point. I agree that changing the system is a bad idea, but leaning on superdelegates on the basis of a popular vote count is not changing the rules. Clinton almost surely will not catch Obama in elected delegates, but neither will Obama be able to clinch the nomination without superdelegates. Sen. Obama's pitch to the superdelegates will likely involve him being ahead in the elected delegate count, but if Sen. Clinton can argue that she's ahead in the popular vote then that will provide cover for superdelegates to support her as well.
The superdelegates were already part of the system as well. Moving to a system where the superdelegates must support the candidate with more pledge delegates is also changing the rules. One presumes that the Democratic Party has superdelegates for a reason; if they merely vote for the one with the most pledged delegates, then why should they exist at all?
I think Obama needs to look realistically and critically at two things:
1) That a candidate with momentum going into the convention versus one who seems to be sinking will be striking, especially if that candidate is Clinton, calling in old chits, coercing right and left, and playing a scorched earth game. Obama's delegate lead will not matter if Clinton wins most of the remaining primaries and seems on the upswing. Add to this drumbeat of Clinton's attacks and Obama will be terribly weakened if cannot redirect things.
2) The Obama campaign needs to take stock of its recent mistakes and missed opportunities so that they are not repeated. Obama had his chance to put the race away last week. He could have shifted the health care policy debate to his stronger suit: how he would put togetehr a majority for reform wherease Clinton fails at that, failed in 1993 and is on the road to failing if she is the 2008 candidate. Likewise, Obama's campaign had a chance to hit Clinton on her tax returns and White House papers: what are you hiding???? And, last, whatever the facts actually were, the Canadian NAFTA memo should never have happened . . . Obama's advisor shouldn't be taking the risk of having conversations with representatives from the uber conservative Harper government.
Obama needs to turn the discussion and do so fast, and do so nationally. Otherwise he is going to be NAFTA-gated, REZKOed, and he's not a muslim "as far as I know" to death.
He is in a tough spot since his appeal depends upon not stooping to Clinton's level..
The Democratic Party is in a tough spot, too, since it is almost impossible to see how it could be pulled together again after another 3 or 4 months of this spiralling warfare. The Party leadership may have missed its opportunity to step in and broker a successful solution.
If the Obama campiagn keeps too focused on its delegate count then it is toast. It needs to win a bigger battle than that. And it needs to do it fast.
Joe
The press has a responsibility to point out the limitations of the "national popular vote" as a measure of who deserves the nomination. The collective popular vote is chimera, different in kind from popular votes within states that held primaries.
The question here is not whether the popular vote in individual primaries should carry any weight (for example, in terms of influencing superdelegates), but whether a "national popular vote" is a legitimate indicator of who should get the nomination. That Washington State had a beauty contest is irrelevant to the basic point, namely, that combining the popular vote from states, thus creating the impression that there has been a national popular election, is misleading and unfair to the caucus states. It also plays into the Clintons' position that somehow smaller red/blue states don't really matter.
[And in this regard, John Thacker is actually supporting my point when he says, "if Sen. Clinton can argue that she's ahead in the popular vote then that will provide cover for superdelegates to support her as well."]
Finally, the collective popular vote issue is related to, but not identical with, questions about Obama's tactics and what he must now do.
Mitchell in New York--
However, the point is that, in the end, the superdelegates will decide the race. Both campaigns are trying to find reasons to claim that the superdelegates should support them. All sorts of arguments and justifications are out there; for example, Clinton would be favored if superdelegates vote according to who won their state, but Obama would get more if they voted according to their home congressional district. The swing is fairly large, too.
It is misleading to claim that there's a national popular vote, I agree. It is, however, also arguably misleading to claim that superdelegates must support the candidate with more pledged delegates.
The race will not be won by pledged delegates alone. Those are the rules.
John Thacker:
Not to belabor the point, but where in my comments about a "national popular vote" do you find any statement that says "superdelegates must support the candidate with the most pledged delegates?" To introduce this as an issue is mudding the waters regarding the point that I was trying to make.
The question of whether the popular vote in individual state primaries should carry any weight with superdelegates is a separate one from the status of a national popular vote. One can make philosophical or prudential arguments for or against popular votes carrying weight within states. But I have done neither. I am just trying to make sure that we don't invent a new category, the national popular vote, when the system as it now stands has states with caucuses and others with primaries.
Of course politicians will try to use "the national popular vote" to their advantage. But this doesn't mean that the Media shouldn't put a big asterisk next to any such figure, and do it sooner rather than later.
With all the states with caucuses, it seems very odd to place such importance on the popular vote.
Of course politicians will try to use "the national popular vote" to their advantage. But this doesn't mean that the Media shouldn't put a big asterisk next to any such figure, and do it sooner rather than later.
Do you think that the complaints of Gene McCarthy (and earlier, RFK) supporters in 1968 were unfounded and should have been accompanied by asterisks? Humphrey was the candidate who won states where party bosses and caucuses chose the delegates, while McCarthy and Kennedy won many more votes in primaries (and Humphrey didn't campaign in primaries).
States choose to have primaries or caucuses. There are principled cases to be made against caucuses. (and cases to be made for them)
Do you believe that the Media should have stressed that there should have been a "big asterisk" next to any such discussion of the "national popular vote" in the 2000 Presidential election? After all, many people could decide not to vote because their state was not being seriously contested (or vote for a protest candidate.)
Sure it's invented. But it's only one of many invented metrics. Both campaigns will talk about winning more states, or winning larger states (as though in either case a 51-49% edge in one state cancels out a larger margin in another), or any of a lot of invented categories. Officially, none of those things matter, and they're certainly invented categories designed to sway voters and superdelegates. For some reason people and the press are obsessed with deciding who "won" a state, even when it has no effect on the number of delegates amassed in the state, nor is officially part of the process. Does it matter that Obama "won" Missouri, or Clinton New Mexico?
Delegate selection is still hardly fair either: for example, there are districts with an even number of delegates and districts with an odd number. Districts with 4 delegates split 2-2 unless one candidate takes 62.5% of the vote, whereas 3 or 5 delegate districts give a 2-1 or 3-2 advantage to the candidate with 51%. In addition, the Vermont Democratic delegate selection process could only be devised by someone with a loose grip on mathematics, as it decides to split the at-large and the one congressional district delegates in order to make things arbitrarily less proportional. The large amount of bonus delegates for voting for Democratic candidates in the past are also fairly arbitrary, if at least known ahead of time.
The superdelegates are designed to be swayed with any sort of arbitrary metrics. An argument that one candidate does better with regular people instead of the party activists with time on their hands to come to caucuses is a reasonable but disputable argument.
I suppose this analysis holds up, if you assume that the Superdelegates are going to get together in a big huddle and then split 794-0, but I don't think that's how it will happen. Under very favorable assumptions, Clinton comes to the convention with a 100-delegate deficit and maybe a 51-49 edge in the popular vote. In order to win, she needs to convince those superdelegates to split 447-347, which means winning 57.3% of the currently unpledged Supers. That's a pretty big margin.
Under assumptions that, while less favorable, still assume big Clinton wins in PA, ID, Puerto Rico and others, Clinton shows up to the Convention with a 120-delegate deficit. She now needs 457-327, or over 60% of the unpledged supers. These people will now be pretty tough to convince, seeing as she will have tied or narrowly losted the national popular vote. Every pledged delegate Obama gets over the first scenario, which was extremely favorable to CLinton, means Clinton needs to convince another superdelegate with a weaker popular vote argument. I just don't see how it happens.
Hillary and Camp Clinton made a big deal about Barack Obama returning money from Tony Rezko, at the same time she refuses to return money back from a firm allegedly accused of sexual harrasasment. Read the report below:
Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return $170,000 in campaign contributions from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.
The federal government has accused the Illinois management consulting firm, International Profit Associates, or IPA, of a brazen pattern of sexual harassment including "sexual assaults," "degrading anti-female language" and "obscene suggestions."
In a 2001 lawsuit full of lurid details, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that 103 women employees at IPA were victimized for years. The civil case is ongoing, and IPA vigorously denies the allegations.
"This is by far, hands down, the worst case I've ever experienced," said Diane Smason, one of the EEOC lawyers handling the lawsuit. "Every woman there experienced sex harassment, they were part of a hostile work environment of sex harassment. And this occurred from the top down."
Sen. Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, told NBC News in a statement that the senator decided to keep the funds because the lawsuit is "ongoing" and because none of the sexual harassment allegations has been proven in court.
"With regard to the pending harassment suit, as a general matter, the campaign assesses findings of fact in deciding whether to return contributions," Wolfson said.
From NBC's Lisa Myers and Jim Popkin
Anyone that is against free trade is either an economic illiterate or someone who is willing to puts its own interest before their country's interest and the poor.
God bless NAFTA.
Hypothetically, superdelegates can be influenced by anything, arbitrary metrics or what they were served for breakfast at the convention, but we assume that there are better and worse reasons for why a delegate chooses a candidate. (Taking a bribe, for instance, would not be a good reason.) An informed public needs information about the reasons.
The Democratic party has set up a REPRESENTATIONAL system that permits caucuses and primaries. This suggests to those who participate in the system that they will not be penalized for the method that they have used to select their delegates. If the Media allows the candidates to emphasize the "national popular vote" without a discussion of its implications for those in the caucus states, it will be doing a disservice to the voters and the process. It will make an arbitrary metric, the alleged national vote, look like something more substantial than it actually is.
I have sought to summarize some of the issues at
http://msa4.wordpress.com/ A. Mitchell Stuart
Mitchell:
No one has argued that the representational system to which you have so altruistically dedicated to uphold should be set aside--nor that the venerable caucus voter be trampled. Nonetheless, you well know the representational system you idealistically cherish also grated super-delegates with the free will to endorse the candidate of their conscience and judgment.
I find it odd however, that you are willing to argue that these super-delegates should disregard their raison d'etre so they can validate the candidate with the greater number of delegates, at the expense of the candidate with the greatest number of votes. In order words you want super-delegates to submit their judgment to the judgment of majority of delegates but not to judgment of the majority of the popular will.
Pardon me, my dear Mitchell in New York, but given your altruism's discrepancies with the Nash Equilibrium, I can safely surmise that your line of reasoning is not entirely driven by an explicit interest in the caucus voter, but rather in a nameless candidate, that for argument's sake I will call Barak Obama.
In my comment of March 5th I do not claim that superdelegates should automatically support the candidate with the greater number of delegates. I argue that Democrats at the convention should not be swayed by a so-called national vote that is biased against caucus states. One has to make a distinction between the so-called national vote, and the primaries and caucuses that take place within states. In the case of the latter, there are philosophical and prudential arguments for why these results should be considered by superdelegates, although I do not make these arguments in my original comment. But this is a different matter than combining the total number of votes in all of the states. Combining votes in this fashion is akin to pretending that apples and oranges aren’t any different because both will do if I am hungry enough.
The issue is not one of altruism. The issue is whether a so-called national popular vote undermines the representational nature of a delegate system that includes caucuses. It is a question about how we understand the “popular will” given the current system. It is a question about fairness and expectations. We need to discuss these matters now, and not in August.