USA Presidential Politics - 2008

[ryberg]

Just curious: why was it that Clinton didn't run in 2004?

I mean, you can look at Obama and think, well, he wasn't well known enough -- he was only making his famous speech at the convention that year -- and maybe he wasn't experienced enough and wanted to get some Senate experience under his belt, and he was certainly young enough to wait, or whatever else. Anyway, not a mystery.

But Clinton... ? She was certainly already well known enough, no question. One might even argue that she was in a better position in that regard in 2004 than after 4 more years had gone by. So many of her experience claims involve what happened during the years of Bill's administration, or even before that, not on her work in the Senate. And it doesn't seem like her view is that she also needed more time getting Senate experience, because that would put her on a par with Obama. (Hey, she even says she can't be Swift Boated, so that would have been a good asset in 2004!)

Did she just prefer to wait for a more open field to do better in than to face an incumbent?

Steve

[ryberg]

Well perhaps someone will come up with an answer to that question, at some point, but in the meantime...

The challenge in Indiana

If, as the polls predict, Mrs Clinton wins in Indiana, she will continue to argue that Mr Obama is incapable of “closing the deal”. But she, of course, cannot close the deal either. A win in Indiana is unlikely to come as such a boost to Mrs Clinton as her wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania did. Indiana is firmly in the Republican camp in presidential elections, rather than being a crucial swing state like those two. And Mr Obama will probably, through his win in North Carolina, have negated most of the gains, in delegates and popular votes that Mrs Clinton made in Pennsylvania.

The bottom line is that to prevail, Mrs Clinton needs a series of big wins, and she has been getting only moderate ones. With the remaining primaries likely to be fairly evenly divided between the two contenders, in the absence of a shock win in North Carolina, it is increasingly hard to see a plausible path that could carry Mrs Clinton to the nomination. That does not mean, of course, that she will give up trying to find one.

Steve

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by ryberg

An Op-Ed piece in the NYT this morning here puts Clinton half a million behind in the popular vote and says that if about 13 events coincide in just the right way for her (one of just medium importance being a double-digit victory in IN tomorrow, for example), she might make up that difference before the clock runs out on her.

And then she could see if that mattered, of course.

That ornery voter problem she has, again...

Steve

Are you saying that she would try to make it matter and that would be wrong, or are you saying that the popular vote does not matter, period?

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by melliedee

Are you saying that she would try to make it matter and that would be wrong, or are you saying that the popular vote does not matter, period?

Sorry, my intention was to say that she could then see if that mattered in the eyes of TPTB in the party, as a way to get the nomination, nothing more. I was thinking specifically for example of Jimmy Carter yesterday morning on I forget which show saying explicitly that it was pledged delegates that mattered and not the popular vote, when it came to the determination of who would be the nominee. Very similar to the view Donna Brazile was also taking on a different program at the same time.

As I said way back somewhere, it would to me be a concern if one candidate won the popular vote and the other won the pledged delegate race, very similar to being a problem if in the general election, one candidate won the popular vote but the other won the electoral college vote. The problem of applying this to the nomination campaign, however, is that it has become clear as time has gone on that nobody has much of any clear idea how to determine what those popular vote totals really are. There are primaries v caucuses. There are states with caucuses that don't report popular vote, while others do. There's the argument that caucuses shouldn't be counted, with the counterargument that they should be doubly counted, because primaries would have gone the same way only on a larger scale. Then there's the whole MI/FL SNAFU, too.

Given all those things, in this campaign, and unless/until TPTB change the system in such a way that it is possible to come up with objective and reliable figures on popular votes (which would necessitate eliminating caucuses altogether, I think, and thus not something that's going to happen), I have no popular vote qualms.

Besides, as that article and many others suggest, she's only going to get close to the argument in the first place by the highly improbable coincidence of quite a number of factors, many of which are highly improbable by themselves, and then by cooking the books (trying to claim Obama got zero votes in MI or that MI & FL were legitimate and arguing about those caucus figures and so on).

Steve

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by ryberg

Sorry, my intention was to say that she could then see if that mattered in the eyes of TPTB in the party, as a way to get the nomination, nothing more. I was thinking specifically for example of Jimmy Carter yesterday morning on I forget which show saying explicitly that it was pledged delegates that mattered and not the popular vote, when it came to the determination of who would be the nominee. Very similar to the view Donna Brazile was also taking on a different program at the same time.

As I said way back somewhere, it would to me be a concern if one candidate won the popular vote and the other won the pledged delegate race, very similar to being a problem if in the general election, one candidate won the popular vote but the other won the electoral college vote. The problem of applying this to the nomination campaign, however, is that it has become clear as time has gone on that nobody has much of any clear idea how to determine what those popular vote totals really are. There are primaries v caucuses. There are states with caucuses that don't report popular vote, while others do. There's the argument that caucuses shouldn't be counted, with the counterargument that they should be doubly counted, because primaries would have gone the same way only on a larger scale. Then there's the whole MI/FL SNAFU, too.

Given all those things, in this campaign, and unless/until TPTB change the system in such a way that it is possible to come up with objective and reliable figures on popular votes (which would necessitate eliminating caucuses altogether, I think, and thus not something that's going to happen), I have no popular vote qualms.

Besides, as that article and many others suggest, she's only going to get close to the argument in the first place by the highly improbable coincidence of quite a number of factors, many of which are highly improbable by themselves, and then by cooking the books (trying to claim Obama got zero votes in MI or that MI & FL were legitimate and arguing about those caucus figures and so on).

Steve

It would be a mess, but the perception of unfairness would loom just as it did in 2000. I didn't think the NYT peice was as "never gonna happen anyways" as you do (though I also do not actually think she can pull ahead either, just that the article claims she has a chance to do just that).

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by melliedee

It would be a mess, but the perception of unfairness would loom just as it did in 2000. I didn't think the NYT peice was as "never gonna happen anyways" as you do (though I also do not actually think she can pull ahead either, just that the article claims she has a chance to do just that).

Well I personally don't think that, if you think in terms of the country as a whole (not just Democrats' perspective), the perception of unfairness loomed around the results of 2000. Unfortunately. If they loomed very large, we would have changed the system.

And I don't think this would be as bad as that was, either, because whereas there's one uniform system for voting in every state in the federal election, there isn't in the primary, and everyone knew that from the get-go and accepted it. I participated in the CO caucus, and as I noted here at the time, it did not make me think that we should have a lot of caucuses over primaries (though caucuses do have a bit of charm to them, undeniably). That's the way it was set up, however, and you don't go back and change it now. And given the nature of caucuses, there's no chance to have an accurate popular vote count. Compound that with some reporting and some not reporting their totals, and it's now doubly mucked up. And then you get to MI & FL.

Of course, this is not to say that the public perception would not think it was unfair, because just as everybody focuses on who just won state X or who might win state Y, without paying attention to factors such as the size and mathematical importance of either such state, or what the overall score in the game is, they probably wouldn't pay any attention to these points, either. And Clinton absolutely wouldn't want them to -- she'd want to push that she was "robbed" until she was being put in the grave, I'm sure. And the press would hype it and so on.

So maybe you have a point.

Good thing it's not going to happen, anyway!

Steve

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by ryberg

Well I personally don't think that, if you think in terms of the country as a whole (not just Democrats' perspective), the perception of unfairness loomed around the results of 2000. Unfortunately. If they loomed very large, we would have changed the system.

And I don't think this would be as bad as that was, either, because whereas there's one uniform system for voting in every state in the federal election, there isn't in the primary, and everyone knew that from the get-go and accepted it. I participated in the CO caucus, and as I noted here at the time, it did not make me think that we should have a lot of caucuses over primaries (though caucuses do have a bit of charm to them, undeniably). That's the way it was set up, however, and you don't go back and change it now. And given the nature of caucuses, there's no chance to have an accurate popular vote count. Compound that with some reporting and some not reporting their totals, and it's now doubly mucked up. And then you get to MI & FL.

Of course, this is not to say that the public perception would not think it was unfair, because just as everybody focuses on who just won state X or who might win state Y, without paying attention to factors such as the size and mathematical importance of either such state, or what the overall score in the game is, they probably wouldn't pay any attention to these points, either. And Clinton absolutely wouldn't want them to -- she'd want to push that she was "robbed" until she was being put in the grave, I'm sure. And the press would hype it and so on.

So maybe you have a point.

Good thing it's not going to happen, anyway!

Steve

It would be an Al Gore SNL skit all over again: "Well, as you know, I won the popular vote..."

I think if one candidate held a popular vote lead and the other a pledged delegate lead, that the convention would be anarchy. I don't think it's gonna happen either, but as the NYT's points out, it is possible.

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by melliedee

It would be an Al Gore SNL skit all over again: "Well, as you know, I won the popular vote..."

I think if one candidate held a popular vote lead and the other a pledged delegate lead, that the convention would be anarchy. I don't think it's gonna happen either, but as the NYT's points out, it is possible.

Oh, that could be an Al Gore skit for sure!

[ryberg]

She may have switched tactics again already, anyway:

Clinton Camp Says It Will Use The Nuclear Option

Hillary Clinton's campaign today acknowledged plans to try to win seating of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic Nation Convention at a meeting of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31 . . .

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations . . .

That article doesn't seem to give it a lot of chance of working, however, and Marc Ambinder over at The Atlantic gives it even less, in this piece:

In any event, whatever the RBC decides, the party's credentials committee, which won't spring into existence until late June, has final say. And Obama will probably have a majority of members on that committee, enough to send a majority report to the convention with whatever recommendation arises from that deliberation. (Clinton's backers would send a minority report.)

That he says after questioning other questionable points that would come up first.

Steve

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by melliedee

It would be an Al Gore SNL skit all over again: "Well, as you know, I won the popular vote..."

I think if one candidate held a popular vote lead and the other a pledged delegate lead, that the convention would be anarchy. I don't think it's gonna happen either, but as the NYT's points out, it is possible.

But, how is it possible if nobody knows what the popular vote count is?

Steve

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by ryberg

But, how is it possible if nobody knows what the popular vote count is?

Steve

The article you linked was only counting the states in which the popular vote is able to be calculated.

[ryberg]

Originally Posted by melliedee

The article you linked was only counting the states in which the popular vote is able to be calculated.

Right.

But that's part of the problem: who's to say that that's the right total, then, if you're leaving some states out?

There's no clear answer, in the end, as to who got more popular votes.

Steve

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by ryberg

Right.

But that's part of the problem: who's to say that that's the right total, then, if you're leaving some states out?

There's no clear answer, in the end, as to who got more popular votes.

Steve

I didn't say it would be accurate, just that public perception would reflect an aura of unfairness which would taint the convention, and probably the national campaign. The article even casts Clinton as the wronged Gore and Obama as the W role. I don't think it's fair, but agree withe the NYTs that it would be a public relations nightmare, accurate count or not.

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by Jacko

Oh, that could be an Al Gore skit for sure!

Lockbox.

[ryberg]

Interesting: she would undoubtedly raise hell everywhere she could with this kind of argument, that she is the rightful nominee because she got more votes from the people. Right?

Yet she evidently has no qualms about the idea that superdelegates -- and as we saw, unelected superdelegates, in this case -- could overturn the results of the pledged delegate race as determined by popular vote in order to make her the nominee.

Nor for that matter about saying that pledged delegates should feel free to abandon the thousands of voters they each represent and switch instead to her side.

She's very consistent in maintaining self-contradictory views.

Steve