The debate over the Democratic popular vote
As pretty much every campaign observer knows by now, Barack Obama not only leads Hillary Clinton among pledged delegates, his margin is big enough that everyone (including the Clinton campaign) is confident that he’ll go to the convention with a comfortable delegate lead.
With that in mind, it doesn’t take long to reach the question on the minds of many: If Clinton is running second, and won’t be able to catch up, what’s the point of continuing? The answer, of course, is that Clinton believes superdelegates can give her the edge (and the nomination), but even that seems unlikely if superdelegates vote largely in line with earned delegates, as is likely.
There is, however, a catch. The Clinton campaign’s possible trump card is the Democratic popular vote. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), a key Clinton surrogate, emphasized this point today.
On a conference call with reporters moments ago, Rendell said: “Let’s assume that Senator Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count.” He then asked, “which is more democratic” — choosing the winner of the popular vote or the winner of the pledged delegate count.
“The way we select delegates is not all that democratic,” Rendell continued, in a reference to caucus voting. “The rules were going in that super-delegates were there to exercise their judgment…as a super-delegate I want to make sure we win in the fall, and I’m gonna take the candidate who can do that.”
Rendell’s argument has plenty of merit. For all the talk about abiding by the “will of the people,” the Clinton campaign may very well want to make this argument literal — forget primaries, caucuses, states, and delegates, and just count up the voters. If one candidate, over the course of 53 or so contests, won more votes than the other, the argument goes, superdelegates would be foolish to dismiss this metric altogether.
Fair enough. The problem with the argument is that Obama leads in this category, too, and the available evidence suggests he’s also unlikely to relinquish this advantage.
Rendell told reporters on the conference call, “Let’s assume that Senator Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count.” As a thought experiment, it’s a legitimate exercise. As a practical matter, it’s a tough assumption to make. Mark Schmitt explained:
For the record, Senator Obama came out of the Mississippi primary with an advantage of 99,000 votes over Senator Clinton, more than I had predicted based on his edge in Alabama. That puts his margin in the nationwide popular vote — by a measure that includes Florida but not Michigan — at more than 500,000.
As I noted yesterday, it will take a colossal victory, almost 60%, for Clinton to get a 200,000 vote edge out of Pennsylvania. And if she does that, there is no plausible scheme under which she could pick up the remaining 300,000 votes to gain even the dubious moral claim of an edge in the popular vote.
It’s well past time to enter the gracious winding-down stage of this long, and until recently, healthy campaign. The last candidate I can remember to keep punching like this even after the race was effectively decided was Jerry Brown in 1992. I’m sure Clinton remembers the unpleasantness of that 1992 convention. I doubt that she wants to be that guy.
The point isn’t lost on the Obama campaign.
Buttressed by a victory in last night’s Mississippi primary, Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign claimed on Wednesday that it not only had a pledged delegate lead that would be hard to reverse, but also a popular vote advantage that Sen. Hillary Clinton would have difficulties overcoming.
“Although we don’t think this is the barometer on which the race will be decided, we have a big popular vote lead,” said campaign manager David Plouffe. “Our popular vote lead is up around a million. Which is obviously a significant edge and one they would have a very tough time reversing.”
There are different tallies available, but looking at RCP’s, Obama leads the popular-vote race by about 700,000 votes if we include primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. If we include Florida, which the campaigns agreed shouldn’t count, Obama still has a 400,000 vote lead. If we include Florida and Michigan, which the candidates agreed shouldn’t count and where Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, Obama still leads, though by a modest 80,000-vote margin.
But here’s a twist — the RCP totals don’t include the popular votes from Iowa, Nevada, Washington state, and Maine, three of which Obama won by wide margins. (In other words, his sizable popular vote lead is even bigger than it appears.)
There are still eight states and two territories yet to vote. Couldn’t Clinton yet claim the popular vote lead? There are multiple reports explaining why that’s highly unlikely.
I suppose different Dems will have different priorities in terms of metrics, but if I were a superdelegate, I’d rank the data points in this order:
1. Pledged delegates
2. Popular votes
3. States won
4. Money raised
5. Polls
If one candidate has most, or all, of these metrics wrapped up, then it’s time to end the nominating process, start bringing the party together behind the winner, and get ready for the general election.
If Clinton can’t catch Obama in the popular vote totals, then we’re getting pretty close to that point.
“Let’s assume that Senator Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count.”
Yes, Gov. Rendell, let’s assume something that has no chance of happening and see how that makes Hillary the nominee. Can I play too? Let’s assume that Senator Clinton won Illinois…
Well if you listened to Hillary on Morning Edition this morning she clearly doesn’t feel that way….
The Clinton campaign is busy with its horse race metrics and scheming schemes, however in the last few weeks I don’t think I’ve heard a single policy position spoken or leadership action taken that makes me think she is pulling ahead of Barack in terms of her being a better candidate.
Gov. Rendel can tilt at the windmills of the Electoral College as well if he wishes, but lately in Hillary’s campaign there has been no there there. Hillary needs to give us a reason to support her and not just tactics for her to achieve her own aims.
Let’s assume we enter an alternate universe where Spock has a goatee and Mary is actually right for once….
My wife and I talked about this the other night and we came to the conclusion that we don’t want Clinton to leave the race until it is completely impossible for her to win the nomination.
We’re afraid that otherwise the next female candidate the comes along will be dismissed with “Well she’s good, but when the going gets tough she’ll fold like Clinton did in 2008.”
Maybe they mean the popular vote in the states that they consider “important”.
Back to your metrics…Obama will likely pull the “fivefecta” or whatever the word for all five of those is…
She’s a fighter. She’s like the kid who still wants the pillow fight to continue after the other kids are having popcorn and watching a video. Annoying as hell.
Mark Schmitt compares Hillary to Jerry Brown? Given the antics of her campaign, I’d have picked George Wallace as the better comparison….
“If one candidate has most, or all, of these metrics wrapped up, then it’s time to end the nominating process, start bringing the party together behind the winner, and get ready for the general election.”
Hear hear!
Oh, hell! Clinton is only counting legitimate votes. If you voted for Obama in a caucus state, or because he wasn’t a woman or a white man, you don’t count. The question is how many legitimate votes does Obama really have?
Clinton is hoping super-dels will wake up and realize that they should subtract these bad votes before determining what to do.
“The way we select delegates is not all that democratic,” Rendell continued, in a reference to caucus voting. “The rules were going in that super-delegates were there to exercise their judgment…”
So, Gov, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”?
Great blog, by the way.
I suppose the superdelegates are free to use any metric they can conjure up to justify their personal decision-making. I wonder though, if the popular vote is going to be a key factor for them, will those Clinton-leaning super delegates count the unimportant States that Obama won? You know, all those annoying little states are conveniently tossed out when discussing pledged delegate totals…
It is wonderful to see the Clintonites squirm as try like heck to have it both ways.
What else should be in the Clinton’s Superdelegate Voter Information Guide, cumulative minutes of all late night television appearances? The list grows by the day…
Dan
Some of the level-headed among us have been saying it all week. Obama leads in every metric. It takes some pretty interesting math to generate a tie or lead for Hillary in any way. It’s time to bow out gracefully, before any more harm can be done.
This race is over. Someone please tell Hillary.
Let’s assume that Diebold and other Republican-controlled voting machine corporations will do the vote counting in Pennsylvania.(Oops, they will). Let’s trust right-wingers to count our votes in secret with proprietary software. Sounds like Hillary may “win” the popular vote in Pennsylvania. With a little help from her Republican friends. Worked like a charm in New Hamphire. Everyone was amazed by Hillary’s “victory.” Too bad that some 80% of the votes were counted there with Diebold optical scanning software, which as been shown to be easity hacked and rigged without a trace left. I have little, if any, faith in election results provided by Republican-controlled corporations counting our votes in secret.Do you trust Republicans and the Bush gangster regime to do anything honestly and with honor?
“We’re afraid that [if Clinton drops out] the next female candidate the comes along will be dismissed with “Well she’s good, but when the going gets tough she’ll fold like Clinton did in 2008.”
If Clinton were to “suspend” her campaign…nobody could reasonably argue that she folded. She already lost. Her delusion about pulling a proverbial rabbit out of a proverbial hat is damaging our cause (to get a Dem in the White House, growing the majority in the Congress and appointing judges with good judgment), and therefore, damaging our country.
CB I know how you like to slant towards Obama but it is very possible that Hillary could win by over your assumed figure of 200,000 in PA. She has the best organization of them both and Obama has just started there and by the time he gets there Spring Break will be in full swing forget the teenie boopers they’ll be in FL or TX or someplace else warm.
“The way we select delegates is not all that democratic,” Rendell continued […]
Quite so, but the time to point that out was in December ‘04, when there were 4 yrs to the next round and a chance of changing the system. Not when the primaries are almost over. Had you stood up for the democratic process then, it would have been a valid argument. Now, it looks more like the defense of your chosen — and losing on almost every metric possible — candidate, rather than defense of democracy.
Hmmm….The evidence clearly shows that 55% of the voters favor her when she is the only major candidate on the ballot. What other measure is there?
Mr. Furious:
“Quinfecta.” One jockey, during a series of races at a horse track, riding five winners.
CB said suggests this order metrics for SD’s to consider:
1. Pledged delegates
2. Popular votes
3. States won
4. Money raised
5. Polls
This sounds pretty good. There will be some question regarding which states were won as to how many states were won. Rendell’s out shilling this line today.
The popular vote si a bit overrated and the electoral college system excessively criticized.
While Gore won teh popular vote, he like Clinton made up this majority mostly in a few very populous states. A strict popular vote renders states with low populations even more impotent than they may feel right now. It also lends extraordinary poiwer to urban voters who are much easier to reach in large nuymbers and therefor would sensibly be seen as being a target worthy of even more attention than they get now.
The electroal college system was set up by our founding fathers to create a nation of all our states, populous and sparse. These states agreed to join the union because they felt they were fairly represented under this system. To this day no state feels exceedingly slighted. Grumbling is about the worst we hear. Secession seems extreme, but how unreasonable is it for Wyoming to get 3 measly electoral votes even if their popular vote is a trifling few? How much MORE unreasonable is it for Wyoming to boast a full 2% of the power of the US Senate?
The stack of dominoes that must fall when tampering with the system seems obvious to me and threatens the union if we insist the rural areas and sparsely populated states be treated as impotent motes.
That said, I would not object to electoral college members being linked to popular votes in their states by law rather than tradition. Even despite the election of Dubya due to this mathematical quirk, I tread very lightly when considering altering the machinations of our nation’s government and the parties should ponder carefully as well.
Again, Hillary is the Democratic Huckabee.
The only reason the media is behaving as if she could still win this thing is because Hillary pumps up ratings, sell newspapers and generates hits on websites.
Irregardless, she’s done.
I suppose the test question is: Would they feel the same if the roles were reversed?
I suspect that if she was Obama, and winning across the board, she would be screaming about how this entitled her to the nomination.
But I guess different rules apply to her. Kind of like how she walks around talking about how she won my state (Michigan), even though hers was the only real name on the ballot. (because she defied the party suggestion to stay off the ballot as nearly all other candidates did).
In mind mind it comes down to this. For her it’s: Win or lose, I win. Right or wrong, fair or not fair, I deserve the nomination because I’m hillary, and that trumps everything else.
by the time he gets there Spring Break will be in full swing forget the teenie boopers they’ll be in FL or TX or someplace else warm.
Unless they’ve moved the primary from late April to, well, right now, I sincerely doubt the colleges will be on spring break.
But maybe those teenie boppers will go down to the soda shop and get a malted before they head off to the sock hop!
I suspect that if she was Obama, and winning across the board, she would be screaming about how this entitled her to the nomination.
If Obama had gone 0-for-11 in the run-up to Super Tuesday, she and the media would’ve hounded him from the race by the end of February. If Obama had never once held the lead in delegates, she and the media would’ve written him off for dead long ago.
Clinton Rules are different.
Rutherford is right. Hillary is the Democratic Party’s version of Omarosa.
Donald Trump resuscitated the infamously dishonest Omarosa on the “The Apprentice” because, since viewers love to hate her, she’s good for ratings. Same deal with Hillary.
CB I know how you like to slant towards Obama but it is very possible that Hillary could win by over your assumed figure of 200,000 in PA. -Comeback Bill
You still don’t get it, do you?
Okay, so she makes up more than 200k in PA. She’d still have to make several hundred thousand more elsewhere. Where’s it going to come from?
It’s over. She’s lost, and if you think her 17 state organization is better than Obama’s 50 state, you’re naive.
Obama. Wins. Every. Metric.
What does it take to convince you Clintonistas that the sky is indeed blue?
Not to worry.
If Hillary isn’t ahead in any of these categories, we will make up another category.
I believe that is called GAMING THE SYSTEM. We don’t like the rules we agreed to, so we make up different ones. When we lose with the ‘new’ rules, we just declare that they are like ‘little states’ and don’t count.
Let’s see now…
Little states don’t count. Except for the few she won.
Caucuses don’t count. Except for Nevada.
Other states don’t count because republicans crossed over to vote for Obama. Except that Texas & Ohio republicans count (because they were sent by Rush?).
THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS IS THAT HILLARY WINS. Obama should be a good boy & acknowledge that leading in delegates, votes, states won, money raised and polls is insufficient. Obama should bow his head & say “Yes massa, you win”. Obama should realize that his bottom-up campaign is only good for riling the masses. He should submit to the top-down leadership of Hillary.
Did Obama reach 2024 delegates while I was out golfing or something? If not let the voters vote and quit whining and crying. If Obama can’t take the heat now how can he take it in September, October and November.
How does Florida and Michigan play into popular vote totals?
“While Gore won the popular vote, he like Clinton made up this majority mostly in a few very populous states. A strict popular vote renders states with low populations even more impotent than they may feel right now.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with that at all. I’m from Montana, and we have as many Senators in office as does California. Small states are vastly over represented in our government, and if anyone in those states thinks otherwise, they’re just deluding themselves.
Taken to an extreme, this means we would award more votes to people who live in rural areas just because that’s where they live. After all, why not divide up states the same way? Can’t let an urban person’s vote have the same weight as a farmer, can we?
Did Obama reach 2024 delegates while I was out golfing or something? If not let the voters vote and quit whining and crying.
Did anyone say that? No, all we’re saying is that there is irrefutable math here that she cannot overtake his lead in delegates or popular vote. She has every right to persist in this pathetic vanity campaign, but she simply can’t overtake his lead. All she’s accomplishing here is dividing the party and dragging down the all-but-presumptive nominee in the process.
Nice work, Huckaclinton.
“it is very possible that Hillary could win by over your assumed figure of 200,000 in PA. She has the best organization of them both and Obama has just started there and by the time he gets there Spring Break will be in full swing forget the teenie boopers they’ll be in FL or TX or someplace else warm.”
Well, it could happen, anything can happen. However, she’s has the better organization? I guess she just put it together then. Obama’s campaign is here in Pittsburgh — they’ve been canvassing in earnest for the last two weekends. Our voter registration here is still open until the 24th of March.
There are 4 Obama yard signs on my block with 6 houses.
Now, I won’t deny, PA is a place of loyalty, blind loyalty even. There are people who will vote for her because they buy the entitlement aspect — she’s been around, let’s just keep her. In my all democrats book group though? Last night 3 of the 6 are Obama, two undecided, one “I like him and I’d vote for him, but I want to vote for her.” However her senior in HS is pro-Obama and the family has agreed to put up a campaign person!
It’s a long time til April 22nd. If he can cut her lead in half? 3/4s? I don’t think she’s getting any more people switching to her (that intend to actually vote for her in the fall, I don’t doubt there’ll be crossovers, though it does require switching registrations). I do think he will get some switchover.
Everyone forgets the margin of error.
The popular vote count is not very good… as yet, it leaves out too much.
But if 25 million people voted, and the difference between Obama and Clinton is in the range of 750,000, then that is the equivalent of a tie, given a 3% margin of error.
No way should either drop out to placate the fools who ignore the fact that pretty much half of us want Clinton the other half Obama.
How does Florida and Michigan play into popular vote totals? -Todd and in Charge
The article Steve cited included Florida, but not Michigan.
No way should either drop out to placate the fools who ignore the fact that pretty much half of us want Clinton the other half Obama. -Nell
Pretty much half of us wanted Kerry, too, but we still got Bush. Them’s the breaks.
It’s good to see that the reality of Clinton’s situation is finally dawning on the people who will ultimately make the decision. I think they’ve held off so far because they didn’t want to be accused of short-circuiting the process, by people like “Comeback Bill” who still think that unless someone gets 2024 delegates the race is still on. The rest of us realize that Hillary has lost, and it may take awhile for the dead-enders to come out of their caves, even after Hillary’s Kamikaze attacks fail.
IMO Hillary’s attacks could actually help Obama in the right circles, because half the country doesn’t like her and the more she engages in “old politics” the more he looks like the “third way” we’ve heard rumors about all these years. Sure, McCain is helped a bit by Hillary’s BS, but they are both viewed with suspicion by the people who will actually decide this election. i think we’ll see a wave of voters who will come out in November to defend the smart kid with the new ideas against the old guard which has failed us all on so many levels.
Hillary = Omarosa = hilarious!
by the time he gets there Spring Break will be in full swing forget the teenie boopers they’ll be in FL or TX or someplace else warm.
Or maybe they will have the whole week off to help change the future of the country.
Oh that evil Hillary! Daring to run against my boyfriend. Why are all the Obama fans afraid to let people vote and have their votes counted? The smearing and name calling against the Clintons because Hillary has the audacity to run for president.
You win the nomination by acquiring a certain number of delegates. All Obama has to do to win is get them. If he can’t then he won’t win. Oh my god! Hillary is wooing super delegates! And what, Obama isn’t?
We don’t know yet who will win this race. The Democratic primary system is a clusterf**k. Open primaries, closed primaries, caucuses, primaries+caucuses, superdelegates. It doesn’t make any sense but it is the system we have. If anything good comes out of this it should be that our next primary is more democratic. As far as I can see both candidates are playing within the rules of the system they entered. Who won the most states, who won the biggest states don’t have anything to do with anything. Unfortunately neither does who won the most votes. Although how you compare caucus votes with popular votes escapes me.
If you are so sure about your candidate why are you so worried? As far as the argument that somehow Hillary is tearing the party apart. Pure bullshit! That’s a MSM talking point to drive her from the race and divide the Democrats. If you want to fall for it then that’s on you. We can complete the process and support the winner, no matter which one it is, or we can fight amongst ourselves and wave McCain into the White House. Gee, which choice do you think FOX News and MSNBC are hoping for.
“given a 3% margin of error”
Is this sarcasm or obtuseness? At the risk of falling for snark, I note that it is Clinton who is pushing the appropriateness of this measure of who should win. If she thinks the popular vote is a sound measure, that’s fine by me, because she still loses. If saying the popular vote shouldn’t count either is her fall-back position, then she should just fall back to being the Senator from New York, a job at which she is competent but shows little imagination or leadership ability. If the popular vote doesn’t count, she has no hope except for the guys in a smoke-filled room, and that’s not happening this year.
What Next in Democratic Primaries?
With Barack Obama’s win in Mississippi he now leads Hillary Clinton in pledged delegates 1411 to 1250. So the question arises, can Hillary Clinton catch up with Obama if she wins Pennsylvania, Indiana and Puerto Rico? A total of 272 delegates (not counting super delegates) are in play.
Assuming that Hillary Clinton wins all three primaries and delegates are allocated by same margin as in Ohio (Hillary’s 75 to Barack’s 66), she will gain 144 delegates to Barack’s 128. This will bring her total pledged delegates to 1394 compared to Barack’s 1539, so she will still be behind by 145 delegates. There still remain other states like North Carolina, where Barack is expected to win with a large margin.
If the democratic Party is seriously interested in taking back the White House, isn’t it time for it to put some sense into the Clintons and tell them this is beyond their reach. Intrigue, insult and large state argument will not win her the nomination. It is the number of delegates that counts at the end of the day. McCain is out fund raising and consolidating while Democrats are still fighting it out.
Isn’t there anyone in charge of the Democratic Party who can say enough is enough and tell Hillary to fold her tent gracefully?
If you are so sure about your candidate why are you so worried? -John Moody
We aren’t worried. We’re realists. Obama has already wrapped this up.
Now is the time to start raising money for the general election. Now is the time to start attacking (not praising) McCain. Thankfully, Obama realizes this and has been focusing on McCain.
By all means, if any Clinton support has a realistic way she can win any of the metrics listed in the article, please share it with us.
Otherwise, there is simply no point in continuing her Quixotic crusade.
The problem with using the popular vote to determine the nominee is that it cradically discounts the states with caucuses, where many fewer voters participate.
The problem with using the popular vote to determine the nominee is that it radically discounts the states with caucuses, where many fewer voters participate.
David in NY
The margin of error indicates the accuracy or the count, not whether it should matter or not.
So, you think Clinton would be unreasonable to stay in a race that’s tied?
I disagree.
John Moody
Bravo, well said.
doubtful
Yeah, thems the breaks… you want Obama to steal the nomination like Bush stole the election in 2000 and 2004?
“The smearing and name calling against the Clintons because Hillary has the audacity to run for president.”
No. Not because she has the audacity to run for president.
Because Hillary has the audacity to engage in race-baiting, expressing a preference for the Republican nominee over her Democratic opponent, and argues for party insiders to overrule the voters.
We’re not smearing Hillary. She smears herself with her disgraceful behavior.
Why are all the Obama fans afraid to let people vote and have their votes counted?
As a former Edwards backer now pulling for Obama, I can say that we’re not afraid of a thing.
Why? Because I know that there is no chance in hell that Clinton will surpass Obama in either the pledged delegates or the popular vote. No chance. None. Zero.
If the Clinton crew could stow the Lee Atwater-Karl Rove smear campaign and keep it civil, I’d be all for an extended contest. A long primary season would keep Democratic issues in the news, it would get Democrats registered and mobilized in every single state, and it would crowd the Republicans off the front page until the summer. It would polish the Democratic message and give the Democratic machine a dress rehearsal for the fall. That would be fantastic. That would be the best possible set-up to a general election campaign.
But they’re not doing that. They have no chance of winning — and they know they have no chance — and so all they’re accomplishing now is (1) dividing the party, (2) turning Democrats against one another, and (3) tarnishing the likely nominee.
I’m not afraid of people voting. I’m afraid of the Clinton narcissism making people not want to vote.
Here’s a challenge to all the people claiming the mean old Obama supporters are keeping their votes from being heard — can you show me a case in which Hillary Clinton can erase Obama’s delegate lead? Go use the Slate delegate counter and get wild with your predictions. Assume she breaks the current tie in Michigan and wins 75-25, or racks up a 80-20 win in Pennsylvania. Go ahead. Spell it out for us and make a case.
If you can’t, it’s all just a pipe dream and pointless wankery.
The game is played by winning delegates.
The World Series is decided by winning games.
It doesn’t really matter if the Yankees won the first three games by 15-0 if they lost the next four games by 3-2. The Yankees would have scored 57 runs and given up 12 and they would still go home the loser.
It didn’t matter who got the most popular vote in 2000 because that wasn’t the way the game was played.
Clinton is trying to change the rules on Michigan and Florida after the fact.
Clinton is trying to change the way we pick the nominee from delegates to popular vote.
I used to support Clinton but I decided that I was wrong after she wanted the rules changed about Florida and Michigan.
Clinton is WRONG
Rich is right - all caucus states get discounted. Heavily discounted. This is stupid. Obama has it. Oh well. I wish she would drop out instead of continuing this desperate play to win the nomination.
You Obama followers are not doing Obama a favor by playing dirty in his name.
If I were him I’d ask you guys to stay off my side
As far as the argument that somehow Hillary is tearing the party apart. Pure bullshit! That’s a MSM talking point
Just take a look at how this blog has transformed since January if don’t believe the Clinton campaign is pulling the party apart. And take a long look in the mirror.
Some of you are dismissing the “top five” list proposed here, which is fine, if you had a valid alternative. No one here is saying the “top five” list should trump the process. What we are saying is since it is clear that neither candidate will have the number of pledged delegates to claim this thing outright it falls to the supers. What we are saying is that the “top five” list is a good measure for the supers to use to determine who they should support. This isn’t fear on the part of Obama supporters. Heck, it isn’t even just Obama supporters proposing the list. And it isn’t some attempt to bypass the agreed upon rules. So, my question to you nay-sayers is this: by what other criteria do you think the supers should use to decide who to support?
Yeah, thems the breaks… you want Obama to steal the nomination like Bush stole the election in 2000 and 2004? -Nell
Haha, nice. I figured you’d spin it dishonestly like that. Way to not disappoint, but I came nowhere near suggesting Obama was stealing the election. He’s simply winning it outright in every single way.
All I wanted to point out to the mathematically-challenged among us is that no matter how close you pretend it to be, Obama is still insurmountably ahead, even if it’s by thin margins.
Honestly, what the hell do you even care for? You’re a self-identified Libertarian.
If you are so sure about your candidate why are you so worried?
Because while we’re sure Obama will get the nomination, we’re concerned Hillary’s trash campaign will cripple him for the general election race.
Again, if one of the Clinton fans here can map out a way in which Hillary can plausibly take the delegate lead in the remaining contest, please speak up. You have tons of polling data out there, and Slate’s handy delegate calculator.
If you can offer a plausible scenario — even if it’s a remote possibility — then fine, I’ll shut up. But if not, then perhaps it’s you who needs to get a grip.
You Obama followers are not doing Obama a favor by playing dirty in his name.
If I were him I’d ask you guys to stay off my side. -Nell
Huh? Are you five? What does this even mean?
I guess I could say the same thing about Hillary, that she should shun the support of the willfully or otherwise ignorant, but that would cut off one of her major demographics.
Nell (#51),
Please tell me how Obama supporters are “playing dirty” as you put it. Are we playing dirty when we point out that Obama has more pledged delegates? Are we playing dirty when we point out that Obama has the popular vote? Are we playing dirty when we point out that Obama has raised and continues to raise more money and is doing so from a large base of small donars rather than big money donars? Are we playing dirty when we point out that, for whatever general election polls are worth this early, Obama consistently polls higher than Clinton against McCain. Are we playing dirty when we point out that Obama’s strong showings in “purple states” suggests that he has a better chance of flipping a few of them to “blue” than Clinton does? Are we playing dirty when we point out that it is highly unlikely that large “blue states” would turn “red” if Obama is the nominee? Are we playing dirty when we point out that Ferraro’s racist statements should have been repudiated and rejected immediately? Or are we playing dirty simply because we support the candidate who is winning rather than your chosen candidate?
http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/
I just punched in a wildly optimistic 65%-35% margin for Clinton in every single state that remains, including a do over in Michigan and Florida. Even that absolutely unrealistic scenario just barely gives her the edge, 1612-1597.
Again, to compare the wild prediction of 65%-35% splits in all these states to the reality, Clinton has her biggest lead in Penn., where she’s up 55-38; Obama leads in NC 49-41; and they’re tied in Michigan.
I’ll repeat an earlier comment I made roughly on the subject:
It kills me when people say this. The US may be a democracy, but the democratic party is not. I submit that the purpose of the nominating process is to select the candidate with the highest probability of winning the general election. And in determining the most probable winner, there is more to consider than merely popular vote, mostly because of the dynamics of the electoral college. Also important are strategic concerns, such as the historical R/D competitiveness of a particular state (which should warrant more influence commensurate with relative voter turnout in the nomination process).
Delegates may not be the best way to account for these factors, but it is at least one way. But just counting the popular vote just ignores these, and it probably almost as bad as the republican nominating process.
Nell:
How can the vote totals be basically a tie when Obama’s lead is, for all practical purposes, insurmountable? I mean, do you realize how incompatible those two ideas are? If the vote is, for all intents and purposes, tied, then not only should Clinton be able to pull ahead, she should be able to on the backs of the votes of one or two states. And yet, we could include two blow-out wins in two very large states (PA and FL) and she still wouldn’t catch up, and wouldn’t really be close, actually.
That’s not “basically a tie”. When you’re behind by so much that you can’t make up the margin with millions of people still to vote, that’s a loss. Not just trailing. A loss.
Accept reality.
In addition to what MLE said at 59, there’s also the following consideration:
caucuses draw fewer people than primaries and, as such, have their weight cut basically in half by giving equal measure to a caucus participant’s “vote” and a primary vote. Further, each of these primaries plays by different rules: some allow Indies to participate, some allow Indies and GOPers to participate, some allow neither. Some allow same-day registration, some allow registration up to a week in advance, and some require registration a full month in advance. Some have early voting; some do not. Some have aggressive absentee-ballot campaigns (Cali, e.g.); others actively discourage absentee balloting (TX, e.g.). Would we consider it “democratic” in the general if in one state, less than half of the of-age population was actually eligible to vote? Would we find it reasonable to then throw those numbers together with vote totals from states where the entire state population was eligible to vote? Of course not.
And, of course, the above concerns are precisely why we have earned* delegates in the first place. I saw someone on another cite comparing it to adding fractions together; by using pledged delegates instead of raw vote totals, you’re basically finding the common denominator, in effect at least attempting to equalize all those differences so we can add the numbers together. The whole point of pledged delegates is precisely to give a better read on general support than the popular vote would.
And lastly, of course, you can use whatever you’d like to appeal to the supers, but as a legalistic argument, we all knew what this race was when we got into it, and as such the appeal to the popular vote rings kinda hollow. But again: who cares, since Clinton is going to lose by that metric as well, anyway?
*David Plouffe is now calling pledged delegates “earned” delegates. I like it. I’m sticking with it.
My i point out that the United States never has been - and is not now - a democracy?
I know that it’s a wonderful, warm, fuzzy word that makes everyone feel good about the accident of their birth, but it isn’t true. If the United States was a democracy, then the popular vote would be all that mattered…ever. On the other hand, if the United States was a democracy we couldn’t blame the invasion/occupation of Iraq on Bush, Clinton, whoever. Wouldn’t that have been interesting? We could have held a popular referendum on whether or not to invade Iraq.
We are a Republic, and the system was designed to be fair and as elegant as possible…250 years ago. There are better ways to go about representative government, but they hadn’t been invented when this country was founded. We’re stuck with the bad of having a Republic, but we also get the good of it…i.e. not having to take personal blame when the shit hits the fan.
Am i splitting hairs or being overly concerned with semantics? Maybe. But there’s a point to it. We can’t go blathering on about Democracy and what it should or should not look like if we don’t have one. And the popular vote is nearly meaningless because we don’t live in a democracy. You can win the popular vote in a general election and lose the election, fair and square. If we apply the metrics of a democracy to a republic, we’re bound to end up tied in knots.
Finally, unless these two (mostly Sen Clinton) can figure out a way to play nice, this is just stupid. It’s turning me off of the Democratic Party completely and regardless of the nominee.
If Clinton stays in until the convention, the nomination will be decided not on the first ballot, where pledged and super delegates may not be sufficient to nominate Obama, but may go to a second or subsequent ballot. In that case, all pledges are released and it is a new ball game. Clinton is close enough to have sufficient support at the convention to obtain the nomination. Obama supporters may not like that, but it is a real possibility and Clinton would be foolish to withdraw without sticking it out until the final decision.
It is ridiculous that Obama and others keep calling on her to just give up. Referring to a 100 delegate lead as “comfortable” ignores the fact that both candidates have over 1000 pledged delegates today and are very close. Obama is trying to shift momentum away from Clinton, but if things stay equal because he is unable to force the decision sooner, then she will have a substantial chance of being nominated. Obama and others may be able to confuse voters about this and to confuse newbies to politics, but Clinton has been around too long to be confused by his attempts to steal the nomination by “encouraging” her to give up. The rest of this is just noise.
Mary, you keep trying to convince us that Obama can’t win on the first vote. Do a little math for us. If Obama does poorly in the rest of the states, he might only end up with 1650 earned delegates. He only needs 375 (2025 - 1650) super delegate to make up the difference. Are you saying he can’t convince that many super delegates? If he has enough super delegates, wouldn’t it be game over on the first ballot?
#62 Lex
“Finally, unless these two (mostly Sen Clinton) can figure out a way to play nice, this is just stupid. It’s turning me off of the Democratic Party completely and regardless of the nominee”
You like Obama and are uncomfortable that the race is so close. So you call Clinton supporters confused newbies. Is this your way of demonstrating by example what it is to play nice? And if you can’t have it your way you are taking your vote elsewhere? You’d let McSame win?
I personally remember Carter. I loved him, but the Washington insiders stonewalled his every move. I worry that Obama might meet the same fate.
#60 Michael
Did you flunk statistics in college? Given the current popular vote tally, it’s a statistical tie. This is not to say it will stay that way, but there are some who think Clinton should drop out now because Obama has a small lead in delegates.
And you are saying the delegates give a better read than the popular vote? Explain how that is?
And you are saying the delegates give a better read than the popular vote? Explain how that is?
The nominating rules of the Democratic Party go by delegates and not popular vote.
Is that too complicated an explanation?
Nell, what people are saying is that barring any huge unforeseeable implosion of the Obama campaign, he will have enough pledged delegates and super delegates to win the nomination on the first pass (despite what Mary says). You don’t have to believe “what people are saying,” you can go to the Slate website, move the delegate bars around for yourself, and come up with your own bet estimate of what will happen. Please share your results: I’d like to hear them.
In my opinion, given the nastiness of the Clinton campaign lately, it’s likely she will only succeed in turning off a lot of Dems, and still not win the nomination. There are some scenarios in which she can win: just slide all of the bars on delegate count website to 60% Clinton, and she will pull ahead. But how likely is that?
Comeback Bill @17 - Hillary is going to win PA because the college kids will be on spring break…. FOR SIX WEEKS?!? That’s a new low in Hillary-troll logic!
#66: TR:
The question was what proof do you have, or explanation do you have, that would lead us to believe that using delegates instead of a popular vote better represents the wishes of the public.
Clearly the “popular vote” used in this race is flawed, but in general, how do you come to the conclusion that using a delegate system better represents the wishes of the public?
Dan, the nasty Obama followers turn me off.
I’m not thrilled with some of Clinton’s campaign people… but I’m thrilled with her. I want to see this play out. It’s my understanding this race will be decided by the superdelegates… and so it is too early and too close to be certain either way.
I’d be happy with either candidate.
[…] you call Clinton supporters confused newbies. — Nell, @ 65
Nell, have you been drinking? Are you seeing double? Are you hearing voices? I went back to Lex’s comment that you refer to (#62), and couldn’t see anything even suggesting that that’s what he thinks about Clinton’s supporters, much less that he has called them that. Where on earth did you get that from????
“Everyone forgets the margin of error.
The popular vote count is not very good… as yet, it leaves out too much.
But if 25 million people voted, and the difference between Obama and Clinton is in the range of 750,000, then that is the equivalent of a tie, given a 3% margin of error.
No way should either drop out to placate the fools who ignore the fact that pretty much half of us want Clinton the other half Obama.”
Oh no you don’t.
There is no such thing as a “margin of error” in an election. You either vote or you don’t. If you don’t vote, you don’t count. The margin of error in a survey is the likelihood that a sample of 1000 people would give the same result as the actual election. And in a properly done sample, it will be within about 3%, 19 times out of 20.
“You Obama followers are not doing Obama a favor by playing dirty in his name.
If I were him I’d ask you guys to stay off my side”
I’m not sure it’s Obama’s supporters who are being misleading here. I agree that basically half of the voters want Clinton and the other half want Obama. The delegate count, if nothing else, accurately reflects this. Obama has a small lead in both. The problem is that Clinton’s supporters are arguing that Clinton can overtake Obama in the popular vote over the last few contests and that is reason enough for a large majority of superdelegates to vote for her and overturn Obama’s lead in the delegate count.
I can’t for the life of me see why they should do that. I think it is more than likely that whatever superdelegates are left unpledged by the convention will split 50/50, either by treaty or by preference, handing the nomination to whoever is leading substantially at the time.
That will be Obama, unless something remarkable happens between now and then.
Where on earth did you get that from????
The same place most of her other comments seem to come from.
(Hint: She sits on it.)
Did you flunk statistics in college? Given the current popular vote tally, it’s a statistical tie. This is not to say it will stay that way, but there are some who think Clinton should drop out now because Obama has a small lead in delegates.
Actually, not only did I excel at statistics in college, I got recruited to a very good school based on my prowess in math. So, again:
The following two ideas are incompatible:
[1]Obama’s lead in either the pledged delegates or the popular vote is “small” or “insignificant” in any sense
[2]Obama’s leads in either/both of the above are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable.
Do you see why those two ideas are logically incompatible. The idea that the race on either metric is “close” doesn’t just imply that there is a significant chance the lead will change hands; it flat-out, explicitly states this is so. To say the race is close or that Obama’s lead is insignificant is to say that there is at least a decent chance that Clinton could erase those leads.
Only here’s the rub: statement [2] is demonstrably true. In fact, it’s been demonstrated, multiple times, by multiple people, including myself, here and elsewhere. So unless you can demonstrate to me/the world some plausible manner by which Clinton captures the popular vote or a pledged delegate lead, what you’re basically saying is, “yeah, his lead is insurmountable, but it’s a small insurmountable lead.” Do you realize how ridiculous a thing that is to say? What is this difficult to grasp? I’m pretty sure I explained this, at length, pretty clearly, in the post you responded to.
And you are saying the delegates give a better read than the popular vote? Explain how that is?
Again, that was the conclusion of a long paragraph. If you object to the reasoning in the paragraph, please, refute it. I will simply re-print it here:
Lastly, on statistical significance, or lack thereof. First off, statistical significance is related to both confidence intervals and population size. The proverbial margin of error follows two basic rules: the bigger the “n” (sample size), the smaller the MOE, and the smaller the confidence interval, the smaller the MOE. The CI basically is the degree to which we can be certain the results are accurate, i.e. we can say with 95% accuracy that such-and-such finding is right, within a margin of error of 5 points. However, we can also say with 75% accuracy that the same finding is right within an MOE of only 2 points, etc etc.
Now, here’s the thing: our sample size here is something like 23,000,000 votes. As such, even with a 99% confidence interval, our MOE is going to be small, less than 1%. So yes, even a 3% difference is outside the MOE.
Further, I’m not sure you even understand what the MOE represents. It refers to sampling errors, that is, the amount by which a partial sample of a given population is representative of a given population. However, we’re not taking a poll here. This isn’t about “guesstimating” the preferences of Dems writ large. Our population is the people who went to the polls, so we don’t have to worry about an MOE. The results aren’t an approximation; they’re the results. So you’re whole complaint, aside from being wrong on the math, is also just wrong on the merits.
Steve, it looks like you and Kos are thinking about the same criteria. He’s provided answers to the following standards:
1.) Pledged Delegates: (Using AP’s numbers, with Obama’s count in parenthesis)
Obama: 1,390 (1,411)
Clinton: 1,248 (1,250)
2.) Popular vote: I updated this post with results from Mississippi. I took out the Texas caucuses just to give this the best pro-Clinton spin possible, though I still think the caucuses are a separate contest and need to be accounted for. (Obama ended up winning Mississippi by over 100,000 votes.)
Obama: 13,614,204
Clinton: 12,801,153
3.) Primaries Won: There are 37 total primary contests. All Obama has to do is win three more and he notches the lead in these contests. He can do that easily with just three out of Montana, South Dakota, Oregon, Indiana, and North Carolina.
Obama: 16
Clinton: 12
4.) Caucuses Won
Obama: 14
Clinton: 3
5.) Overall contests Won: It’s a 2-1 Obama advantage (includes territories and Democrats Abroad).
Obama: 30
Clinton: 15
6.) Red and Blue States Won (including DC, not including territories or Democrats Abroad):
Obama: 16 Red, 11 Blue
Clinton: 8 Red, 6 Blue
8.) Money Raised (through February)
Obama: $168 million
Clinton: $140 million
the process is not over. he can’t win 2025, and surely the clintons have the skill to win a floor fight at the convention. would you like it to be over and have a corination at the convention, its obvious that you do, but the fact is that without 2025 all the metrics mean nothing. woodrow wilson was third in delegates and went to the convention and won. humphrey won exactly ZERO primaries, but he won at the convention. clinton will be close enough to make an arguement at the convention, not to mention the x-factor of unknowns that could be unearthed about obama between now and the convention that could change the minds of the delegates. i know you would like it to end early so you could have a party in denver, but this is how REAL elections were always held, and if obama can’t win PA and can’t win 2025, then he is going to have to win a floor fight. as much as you want her to give up and give him the nomination, he is going to have to take it himself. he has had so many chances to end this thing its almost absurd; new hampshire, he failed, super tuesday, he failed, ohio and texas, he failed, PA, looks like he will fail again. his last chance will be a floor fight, and if he loses that, he deserves to lose. all the metrics in the world will not be able to deny she was the stronger fighter and more capable candidate.
Michael
I was looking at the numbers discussed in the blog.
“There are different tallies available, but looking at RCP’s, Obama leads the popular-vote race by about 700,000 votes if we include primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. If we include Florida, which the campaigns agreed shouldn’t count, Obama still has a 400,000 vote lead. If we include Florida and Michigan, which the candidates agreed shouldn’t count and where Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, Obama still leads, though by a modest 80,000-vote margin.”
With the total tally at about 26415357 votes, a 700,000 vote lead is within the 3% margin of error.
After the close races in 2000 and 2004, I felt that this issue was swept under the rug. I think we need to understand that our system is not 100% accurate when it comes to vote tallies. All the FL delegates went to Bush in spite of the fact the difference in popular vote was deep in the noise..
I don’t hate Obama, I don’t even oppose Obama. I just think it’s silly to ask Clinton to give up when the race is this tight.
813,000 is just outside the margin of error, and therefore marginally statistically significant.
But you pointed out yourself that 26415357 total vote count has a bunch of ifs and buts. A big IF is PA.
I guess it’d take someone better than me to figure the margin of error for caucuses. Perhaps, since you are good at this, you could give it a try. A caucus is pretty much a poll, yes? So I guess you’d use sampling error. But you’d have to consider demographics as well. The fact that Obama does so much better than HRC in caucuses is a good subject to debate.
woodrow wilson was third in delegates and went to the convention and won. humphrey won exactly ZERO primaries, but he won at the convention.
Woodrow Wilson was nominated on the 46th ballot, and only then because three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan put all his weight behind him. Do you think we’ll go 46 ballots this time? Do you see an impartial Democratic leader with that kind of weight?
Hubert Humphrey? Remind me — was he elected that year? Did the Democratic Party fare well in presidential elections in the ensuing decades?
as much as you want her to give up and give him the nomination, he is going to have to take it himself. he has had so many chances to end this thing its almost absurd; new hampshire, he failed, super tuesday, he failed, ohio and texas, he failed, PA, looks like he will fail again.
Of the first three contests, Obama won Iowa and South Carolina, and Clinton won NH. On Super Tuesday, he won more states (14 to her
and more delegates (847 to 834). She won more delegates in Ohio, but he won more delegates in Texas. And you conveniently ignore the 11-for-11 stretch he had before Super Tuesday, and the 2-for-2 he’s had since the OH/TX split decision.
Yeah, that’s a whole lot of failure on Obama’s part. Clinton won’t bow out, so he’s the loser. Right.
clinton will be close enough to make an arguement at the convention, not to mention the x-factor of unknowns that could be unearthed about obama between now and the convention that could change the minds of the delegates. … his last chance will be a floor fight, and if he loses that, he deserves to lose. all the metrics in the world will not be able to deny she was the stronger fighter and more capable candidate.
Translation: Voters be damned, the Clinton campaign is going to steal this with dirty tricks or back-room deals. And if you democracy-lovers have a problem with that, you’re just a bunch of cry-babies.
Nice to see Mary has a son.
That bit with the stupid sunglasses icon should be “14 to her 8″
Matt,
I agree that if Clinton wants to take it to a floor fight she can. However, you should stop claiming that Clinton won Texas. The fact is that Texas has a two-step system as I’m sure you well know. And when both the primary and caucus results are tallied, Obama, not Clinton, won more deligates from Texas. Texas is NOT a Clinton victory….period.
Further, Humphry got the nomination in a different time, under different party rules, so that example doesn’t really hold up.
Do you really think Clinton can rack up 60/40 victories in ALL of the remaining states? I mean, that is the only way Clinton could claim a delegate or popular vote lead. And in my opinion the only way she can make a viable argument that she is the better nominee. The reality is that Pennsylvania will likely be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 55/45 Clinton win…and that will be largely offset by 45/55 Obama win in North Carolina. West Virginia, Oregon, Kentucky, Puerto Rico,
Montana and South Dakota are all that are left after that. Show me where Clinton picks up enough delegates to claim that she is somehow the better candidate. I just don’t see it. It isn’t going to happen. By any measure I can see, Obama wraps this up in the first round of voting when the supers realize he is the stronger candidate and put this thing to rest.
People, you need to stop throwing out the term “margin of error” the way you are. This is a statistical term meant specifically for a sample population…something like 2000 people that are thought to be representative of the entire population.
Applying the term “margin of error” to actual results is completely wrong. Votes are votes. Delegates are delegates.
Do you really think Clinton can rack up 60/40 victories in ALL of the remaining states? I mean, that is the only way Clinton could claim a delegate or popular vote lead.
Actually, it’s even worse than that. She’d have to get 64/36 victories across the board to claim the delegate lead.
Again, to all the Clinton backers who insist she has a path to the nomination — one that doesn’t involve Matt’s scenario of a Humphrey-like convention triumph — please feel free to sketch that out. Until then, all the claims of a viable Clinton candidacy sound a little empty.
So-called pledged delegates are not actually pledged in a binding sense. Super-delegates are not a known quantity until they actually vote. I’m also not sure what happened to Edwards delegates or those of the other minor candidates in the early primaries. At the convention, it will become clear whether Obama wins or not on the first ballot. If he doesn’t, as I said, all bets will be off because delegates are only formally “pledged” for the first ballot.
Obama may royally put his foot in his mouth. A scandel may emerge (as demonstrated by Spitzer). People may decide he isn’t living up to his hype or they may tire of the new kid on the block, or the young enthusiasts may lose steam and leave the field to the party faithful (there is a reason they are called that). The Republicans and “Independents will no longer be present, letting the democrats make their own decisions.
Those who claim that the people have spoken in caucuses are confused. First, a caucus is not an election. Second, the rules of the various caucuses fluctuate and have been “worked” to achieve desired ends in the various states, in ways that will not occur during an actual election. Third, the delegate counts are a suggestion to the party, not a legally binding vote that will compel party members to select Obama if he has the most delegates. That’s why there are super-delegates and a balloting process at the convention. If this were a simple matter of just selecting whoever is in the lead, there would be no need for a convention except to anoint the leader. But, that isn’t what happens. Obama wants it to work that way, but it doesn’t.
If Hillary wins at the convention, it will not be through dirty tricks or back-room shenanigans. It will be because she won the confidence of those voting at the convention — who are the party regulars whose job is to select the candidate. The candidate is not directly elected. Hillary Clinton knows this. The only way this will end prematurely is if Obama agrees to be her VP. Since he has closed that door, he’d better be prepared to take this all the way to the convention.
If he doesn’t have the stomach for it, he won’t be the candidate. Politics is not for dainty fragile flowers. Hillary is being crucified for having the guts to fight for her nomination. The bile is sickening and it IS driving people away from the blogs, Air America and from Obama. Obama will be dead in regular politics if he keeps up these underhanded attacks on a woman who is doing nothing more and nothing less than running for office.
If Obama truly wishes to remove race from this process, I suggest that he give up the delegates he has won by virtue of the solid African American vote (80-90%), a vote made solely by skin color because on the merits Clinton has done as much, if not more (because she has had more opportunity) for African American constituents than Obama has). I found it plaintive that Geraldine Ferraro had to remind folks of the 40 years she has worked for civil rights in this country, forgotten because Obama wanted to play the race card and objected to her essentially correct observation that without the black vote, he wouldn’t be tied with her or even that close. He needed those southern states to make his argument and he won them because of the African American bloc voting. It is not racist to say that — it is a simple fact. (For the record, racism by definition is animosity toward a member of a group based on their race. It is not any mention of race that Obama wishes to undercut because he finds it uncomfortable to address. This campaign seems to have defined a racist as anyone who opposes Obama, regardless of their motive. It doesn’t work that way.)
“If Hillary wins at the convention, it will not be through dirty tricks or back-room shenanigans. It will be because she won the confidence of those voting at the convention — who are the party regulars whose job is to select the candidate. The candidate is not directly elected. Hillary Clinton knows this. The only way this will end prematurely is if Obama agrees to be her VP. Since he has closed that door, he’d better be prepared to take this all the way to the convention.”
To be perfectly honest, I have long since come to the conclusion that if it goes to the convention, Obama is going to give Clinton the thumping of her life. All the talk about what Clinton “could” do if she makes it to the convention is smoke and mirrors.
Clinton expected to have this wrapped up by February 5. She didn’t bother to study how Texas chose its delegates and failed to submit a slate on time in Pennsylvania.
Obama, on the other hand, leaked his predictions for the remaining contests after Super Tuesday and his table accurately predicted how well he would do in nearly every state that has voted. He predicted that he would finish with more pledged delegates and has exceeded his targets in many states.
More to the point, the vast majority of the superdelegates who have declared since Super Tuesday have declared for Obama, and he has come close to eliminating Clinton’s original advantage. He has obviously expected to take this to the convention right from day one and has acted accordingly.
You believe that everybody who hasn’t pledged yet will turn out for Clinton at the convention because… why exactly?
You are correct that whoever wins at the convention will be the one who wins the confidence of those voting there. I suspect it will be the candidate who seems to know what he is doing.
Mary says — If Obama truly wishes to remove race from this process, I suggest that he give up the delegates he has won by virtue of the solid African American vote (80-90%), a vote made solely by skin color because on the merits Clinton has done as much, if not more (because she has had more opportunity) for African American constituents than Obama has). –
Did you really write that? Can you see what you just said? I posted this earlier on another thread — HRC threw away many of those African-American votes. Votes that she had, even when they knew that BHO was running. But she poisoned that well. She did the LBJ thing, Bill did the SC thing, there was the drug dealer thing and the guy from BET thing, now the Ferraro thing (among others).
She had many if not most of those votes and SHE LOST THEM. Ahem. She lost them or perhaps more accurately, she purposely drove them away to buy the votes of more bigoted voters in a couple of states.
So, how’s this? He gives up those delegates and she gives up the delegates that came from women voting for her. That’s just as reasonable, right?
I suggest that he give up the delegates he has won by virtue of the solid African American vote (80-90%), a vote made solely by skin color
Wow. Of all the stupid and offensive things you’ve said, Mary, this may take the cake. Nice to know blacks don’t count as real voters in your mind.
To be perfectly honest, I have long since come to the conclusion that if it goes to the convention, Obama is going to give Clinton the thumping of her life.
I agree.
I find it funny that all the Clinton backers who dismiss caucuses as undemocratic, because they somehow don’t represent the views of all voters but just the most energetic party members, are at the same time valorizing the convention above all else. A convention is, after all, much like a caucus. Fluid political negotiations, determined not by the population at large, but a small contingent of activists. Sound familiar?
And if you think a group of ordinary voters in a living room somewhere were unfairly duped by the dynamism of Barack Obama, just what do you think a convention floor full of politicians is going to do when the man is speaking to them personally in full view of a national television audience?
He’ll win that argument if it comes down to it, Mary, and then you can run away from the Democratic Party as you’ve repeatedly said, and let all the values and programs for which Hillary Clinton stands simply rot by the wayside. It’s all about the object of your affection, and the rest can go to hell, right?
You know, up until just a few weeks ago, the trolls here were pretty much evenly divided between the Clinton and Obama camps. Now they’re overwhelmingly pro-Clinton. Gotta wonder at the recent and sudden change.
I figure it has something to do with both Ferraro’s recent statement and Olbermann’s Special Comment. Between defending Ferraro’s (unknowing?) racism and sneering at how Olbermann has “obviously” become an Obama supporter, they’ve been busy lately.
OK Mary, you are being silly. Blacks are citizens, and their votes count just as much as yours. However, sure, let’s call for Obama to give up all his votes from blacks, as long as Clinton gives up all her votes from whites. Then you’ll no doubt discover that Obama is actually half-white, and you’ll want him to give up all his votes from whites as well.
Mary, you seem to be hoping that the vast majority of the superdelegates are suddenly going to realize that ‘oh my god, we’re all making a horrible mistake and it’s time to rally behind Hillary,” or at least that a bunch of the delegates pledged to Obama will do this on a second ballot, if not the first. I would urge you to go to the online New York Times, US politics, Superdelegates ( http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/superdelegates/index.html ), and read the comments from many of the superdelegates about what they expect to do and why. Some view it as their duty to vote their best judgement, and some consider that their best judgement calls them to vote for Obama. A lot of them are clearly reluctant to go against strong preferences expressed by the voters in their states. Also, a lot of the unpledged delegates have already expressed their intentions, and their intentions are mixed.
In summary, the superdelegates are also split, and for now, they certainly aren’t unanimously for anybody. If that holds, Obama’s overall lead will also hold.
Mary @ 10:20 says:
“… the delegates he has won by virtue of the solid African American vote (80-90%), a vote made solely by skin color because on the merits Clinton has done as much, if not more (because she has had more opportunity) for African American constituents than Obama has).”
Like it or not, Mary, this is racist. To suggest that African-American voters only voted for Obama because of skin color; to imply that they simply don’t know any better and that Clinton has done more for them (oh, if they could only simply see that) is infantilization and condescension. It is to say that a class of people is incapable of making a decision based on anything more than in-group loyalty.
Pretty weak, even by your standards.
independent thinker
you are neither
Wow, Neil, you completely refuted all of his points with that zinger.
Nice to see the Linda Richman Debating Course went to good use.
Ah, Nell. Have you really reduced yourself to flaming someone’s nickname? Your previous posts at least attempted to seem reasoned and logical. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
With the total tally at about 26415357 votes, a 700,000 vote lead is within the 3% margin of error.
After the close races in 2000 and 2004, I felt that this issue was swept under the rug. I think we need to understand that our system is not 100% accurate when it comes to vote tallies. All the FL delegates went to Bush in spite of the fact the difference in popular vote was deep in the noise..
Again–
a sample that size has a margin of error smaller than 3%, even for a 99% confidence interval.
and
the term “margin of error” only refers to situations where you’re taking a small slice of a population in th expectation that said slice will be representative of the whole population. That is, if you sample, say, 2,000 Eskimos out of a total population of 3,000,000 Eskimos. However, that’s not the situation in which we’re operating here. The point of elections isn’t to take a poll of some broader population; our target population, whose preference we wish to ascertain, is precisely the voters who actually went and voted. As such, the entire concept of a “margin of error” is completely inapplicable here. The only “margin of error” that exists is the possibility of machine error, and sorry, but no, 700,000 votes does not fall in that range. Maybe 120,000 votes, in a general election, where turnout is much higher, would make sense. But here? No. They did a re-count in NH and what did they find? Something in the hundreds in terms of misread votes.
So, again: if the concept of “margin of error” even applied here, it would be miniscule, because of the large sample size. Think about this for a second: I don’t know if you know much about fractions, but I imagine that you get that 1/2 > 1/4 > 1/10, etc etc. That is, the bigger the number in the denominator (the number on the bottom of the fraction), the smaller the value of the total fraction.
Well, when we calculate the margin of error, the sample size goes into the denominator. That is, that huge number, 23,000,000+, of total voters? That’s gonna be underneath our fraction for figuring out what the MOE is. Think about that. Think about how small that fraction is gonna be. Trust me when I say: really really small, much smaller than 3%.
Now, of course, again: the concept of “margin of error” doesn’t actually apply to the situation of counting votes, because our goal in counting said votes isn’t to estimate the preference of some larger population of which the voters are supposed to be a representative sample; our goal is simple to figure out who has more voters. When I count the money in my wallet, I don’t have to qualify it with confidence intervals or margin of error because I’m not using those numbers to estimate the general amount of money in someone’s wallet; I’m just counting my money.
But even if the margin of error did apply here (and it doesn’t), it would still be so small that Barack Obama’s lead in the popular vote would be well outside it, because our sample size is so incredibly large
Hey, I voted for Obama…I must be black and never knew it
Seriously, Mary, you make it sound like ONLY African Americans voted for Barack Obama. The fact is that in many states he won the white voters too (like me). And even in states where Clinton won more of the white vote Obama still earned a significant portion. Race is NOT the primary (excuse the pun) reason why Obama supporters voted for him. For many people he is a dynamic, energetic, intelligent alternative to politics as usual.
And please stop implying that caucuses are completely without merit. True, they do favor people who are excited enough about a candidate to spend a few hours caucusing for her or him, but that is hardly a compelling arguement for why they are less valid than a primary.
Several of the “big” states that Clinton won have early voting built in which tended to favor Clinton due to her better name recognition early on. Isn’t it interesting that in every one of the “big” states that Clinton won the polling data showed Obama closing the gap as he campaigned and people got to know him?
Don’t get me wrong, I WILL vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination. I just don’t think it is going to happen. I think people here would be more inclined to listen to what you have to say if you would at least recognize the reality that Obama has a clear advantage at this point in delegates and the popular vote, which definitely suggests an advantage in the nominating process. People aren’t upset that you prefer Clinton, they are bothered by your apparent need to spin any Obama victory as trivial and every Obama supporter as somehow deluded.
Nell (#90).
Well, I am registered as “decline to state” (independent) and I do try to think for myself. I have been paying close attention to the candidates since they first started declaring exploratory committees…and not just Democrats. And after months of pondering who to support I decided Obama was the best choice to lead our nation. But thank you for your opinion.
Guys, at least now it is an intelligent debate. And isn’t