Hannah Hates Politics

[cellomusette]

Gosh, this primary is starting to remind me of the presidential election in 2000. Remember how Gore won the popular vote and Bush got the electoral? It's happening again, within the Dem party.

I always thought that a democratic election was based on how many individual votes each candidate received. Looks like I was wrong.

I think it's safe to say that the popular vote is now obsolete. Why even go to the polls anymore, when we have superdelegates to tell us how we really feel?

Comments

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who has no horse in this race (I don't care for the policies of Obama, Clinton, or McCain, and I'm probably not voting for any of them), I hope I can provide a relatively objective point of view. More to the point, don't take my word for it; do some research from different points of view. You might discover that:

Point 1) The nomination race was always about delegates. It was never about the popular vote (if it were, why would there be caucuses?). Personally, I had never heard reference to counting the popular vote until the Clinton campaign raised it.

Point 2) All the candidates knew how the rules were set up, and agreed to them. No one complained in advance. But Obama ran a better campaign, by maximizing his delegate advantage in states he won and minimizing his disadvantage in states he lost. Had the rules been different, he would have run a different campaign.

Clinton never complained about the rules before the campaign began, only once they were to her disadvantage. (Nor did she have any problem with stripping the delegates entirely from Florida and Michigan-- indeed, she put it in writing-- until she needed them.) Will she care about changing the rules to a popular vote once 2008 is over? (My guess: Only if it's to her advantage in 2012 or 2016.)

Do you honestly believe that, had it been Obama who won 55% of the vote in Michigan because he was the only major candidate on it, and had it been Clinton who had her name withdrawn from the ballot in Michigan, that Clinton would still be arguing to count all the delegates? As it is, her own version of the popular vote count gives herself 55% and Obama 0% of the Michigan votes, even though, presumably, many of the 40% who voted "uncommitted" in Michigan actually favored Obama despite his not being on the ballot. Which gets me to the next point...

Point 3) It's not at all clear that Hillary received more popular votes. Here's a site that lets you calculate the popular vote totals in 972 different ways. Nearly all of them give Obama the edge.