Tag: "2008 democratic primary"

Crunching the Popular Vote Numbers

For my part I think that the superdelegates should be able to consider whatever they want when deciding between Clinton and Obama, and if they want to take seriously the idea that cobbling together a national popular vote makes any sense, more power to them. Along with “Obama can’t win the big states, so kiss New York and California goodbye”, the national popular vote notion has been one of the few remaining tropes that the Clinton-supporting blogosphere can trot out with a straight face. Mark Schmitt, however, crunches the numbers and demonstrates that this line of thinking doesn’t solve any of Clinton’s problems. Even accepting a big Clinton win in Pennsylvania and a win in the Florida re-vote as big as her win in the straw poll, Clinton remains substantially behind Obama. To close the gap she would need to win huge in Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and a Michigan re-vote, and virtually tie Obama in such states as Oregon and North Carolina.

In short, it’s remarkably difficult to imagine a plausible scenario in which Obama doesn’t reach the convention with leads in the popular vote and the pledged delegate total. A Clinton victory would almost inevitably involve the superdelegates overturning both of those outcomes. The only other option, I suppose, is pushing the Lukasiak “we can use exit polls to demonstrate that Clinton wins a subset of the popular vote” nonsense, but it’s hard for me to believe that even the people peddling that line take it very seriously.

QOTD

Ezra:

If Hillary Clinton were a black man, it’s unlikely that she would have been a national political figure for the past 15 years, as it’s unlikely that she would have married another man from Arkansas, and unlikely that the country would have put an interracial, same sex couple in the White House. But so what? This is an election, not Marvel’s “What If?” series.

Indeed.

They’re Being Run By A Committee Consisting of Cam Bonifay, Michael Brown, and Katherine Harris

That explains why there’s nothing resembling a vote count in the Texas caucuses. I believe that the operative words are “in” and “ept.”

The Right Call

Howard Dean says that delegates will not be seated based on the Michigan and Florida straw polls, but would be willing to sanction delegates based on an actual election agreed to by both campaigns. This is obviously the correct decision. We’ll see if the state parties choose to enfranchise their voters or not.

The Long Primary

Kevin Drum, citing 1968, says that Democrat’s needn’t panic. I don’t really buy the historical analogy for a reason that can be summed up in two words: George Wallace. Without him in the race to split the white supremacist vote that went for Goldwater in 1964, Nixon almost certainly wins in a massive landslide. For this reason, I don’t think that this is a very encouraging precedent. On his overall argument, however, I agree with him at least to a point. I don’t think that the extension of the campaign per se is a big deal at all. Were Obama to win Pennsylvania and end the race, for example, I don’t think that the extra month of campaigning would hurt him much as a candidate, and as Kevin says depriving McCain of oxygen may even be a net positive.

The bigger problem is a scenario (which, given that Clinton has to be considered a strong favorite in Pennsylvania, has a substantial likelihood) where Obama has a lead of pledged delegates in the high double or low triple digits but is coming off some high-profile losses in state popular votes. Serious attempts by Clinton to seat delegates based on the results of Michigan and Florida straw polls (although not necessarily a re-vote agreed to by both campaigns and the DNC), for example, would produce very serious conflict. And if Clinton were put over the top by superdelegates (which I continue to think is highly unlikely) she would be severely weakened as a general election candidate. Is it possible that the Democrats could win after a protracted convention battle? Sure. But it would turn an election in which the Democratic candidate has considerable structural advantages into a much dicier proposition. I don’t think that this is something to be sanguine about.

But that’s life; politics is messy. Even having two very strong potential candidates has its downside. It’s especially ironic that a process re-designed to produce a quick victory and party unity has led to the opposite, but unintended consequences are endemic to political institutions. Hopefully this won’t put John McCain in the White House.

Worst Case Scenario

It looks increasingly likely: Obama, assuming something like his 10-point lead in the Texas caucuses holds up, will win Texas by the metric that actually matters for determining the nomination and overall will do well enough in the delegate count to remain a prohibitive favorite. But with Clinton winning Ohio and “winning” Texas by winning the popular vote in the primaries, she’s certain to stay in and the media narrative that she won a major victory is well in place (and, in a sense by preventing Obama from landing a clear knockout blow she did.) So this thing will go on for another month, and the chances of a debilitating convention fight (still the only foreseeable way that Clinton could win the nomination) that could seriously compromise the Democratic nominee in the general have increased.

Political junkie or not, I’m really not looking forward to this.

Texas, Ohio, etc.

Open thread…

Super Tuesday Part Deux

My worth-very-little guess is that the most likely outcome is that (with Clinton winning OH and RI, and Obama carrying VT) Obama wins the delegates in Texas and Clinton squeaks out a popular vote victory there. Should that come to pass, I think most of what Atrios says here is relevant:

I think candidates can stay in the race as long as they want, though I do think they all have an increasing obligation to keep criticisms responsible for the sake of the general, but I’m not sure I understand this particular line in the sand. If, say, Clinton wins Ohio, wins Texas by 1 point, but loses Texas in the delegates, is this really different from the same situation except with her losing Texas by one point? It doesn’t really seem to make any difference. I’m not trying to encourage her to drop out, I’m just not sure why that particular hurdle (if true) is meaningful.

An Obama win in Texas effectively ends the race. But I wouldn’t (so long as the campaign is minimally responsible) think to tell Clinton to drop out; it’s her decision when she wants to end the campaign, and I don’t think keeping some attention on the Democratic candidates is a bad thing. It’s also worth noting that if Clinton narrowly wins a narrow vote in Texas while losing the delegates it doesn’t mean anything. Not only because the nomination is decided by delegates not total votes, but because the strategic context affects the vote outcome. Acquiring delegates, after all, is the goal being pursued by the candidates, and Obama may have campaigned differently in a way that would have maximized his vote rather than delegate count. You can’t assume that a small vote advantage would have held up in a different set of rules, and under the rules we have whoever wins the delegates wins the state, period.