Hillary Clinton just sent this e-mail out to supporters; boldface in original:
This Sunday, voters in Puerto Rico will go to the polls and make their voices
heard — the first time the island has played such a vital role in selecting our
party’s nominee. At this critical moment, I am depending on you to help me make
sure they have a choice. We are depending on the voters of Puerto Rico
in our fight to secure the nomination.
She goes on to say that "this race is up to the voters, and I’m
going to keep fighting for every last vote," and that "over the next four days, we have the
opportunity to make history in the Puerto Rico primary — and win the national
primary vote by redoubling our efforts."
That some very interesting language there: "national primary vote." Is she trying (again) to exclude all caucuses now, even the ones that report popular-vote tallies? I thought Hillary said we must have a nominee based on 50 states! Now she seems to be suggesting that she can claim victory based on the popular vote in 37 states, two territories and the District of Columbia. Hmm.
Needless to say, that’s ridiculous, and nobody would take such a tally seriously. However, as I’ve pointed out before, Hillary does have a shot at an arguably plausible "victory" in the tally of all states and territories — leaving aside that the "popular vote" is an inherently illegitimate metric — but, in order to get it, she’d need a Puerto Rico margin of between 113,000 and 268,000 votes, depending on how you do the Michigan math. The best magic number for her to aim for is probably 177,000; that margin would give her a shot at catching Obama in the count that includes all the caucus states and Florida and Michigan, and gives Obama the "Uncommitted" vote in Michigan. (To win without Michigan, she’d need 268,000+.)
Of course, I realize that the notion of a popular-vote victory fundamentally premised on a Puerto Rico blowout is a contentious issue. But I’m not wading into the pros and cons right now — been there, done that. I just wanted to point out, for whatever it’s worth, that the Clinton campaign has now made it explicitly clear that they are "depending on" Puerto Rico.
Today’s e-mail missive from the Obama campaign, by the way, states as follows:
Only
three contests remain in the Democratic primary.Voters head to the polls in Puerto Rico on Sunday, followed by South Dakota
and Montana on Tuesday.After more than four dozen contests, Barack has won the most votes, the most
delegates, and more than half the states. But we still need 48 delegates to
secure the nomination.We’re fighting in these critical states and making the preparations necessary
to take on Senator McCain.
That language, "these critical states," is intriguing. Are they sloppily declaring Puerto Rico a "state," or are they implying that South Dakota and Montana and the only "critical" contests remaining? We report, you decide.
P.S. Hillary’s memo to the superdelegates sheds some light on that "national primary vote" line:
[W]hen the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest
nominee – the one who would be the best President and Commander in
Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who
is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just
the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people
will have cast their votes for me.
So, "more delegates earned through primaries" = "more people have cast their votes for me." So she is advancing a metric that explicitly ignores the will of the voters in 13 states. Fantastic!
The problem with this approach goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, since Hillary Clinton appears committed to leaving no childish lie behind, no asinine argument unmade, no deceptive bit of rhetorical nonsense unstated in her endless assault upon reason, logic and truth. So, here goes:
It’s one thing to claim that caucuses are undemocratic, unrepresentative, unfair, and generally, well, bad. That’s a perfectly defensible position. However, it’s the sort of argument that you make in the course of trying to reform the system,
for example by convincing caucus states to switch over to primaries.
Hillary did not do this — indeed, she played lip service to
the glory of the caucus process in Iowa specifically, in order to
pander to those voters — and now, instead, she wants to simply ignore
the results from those states, because of their "undemocratic" process. Well, guess what? I know something that’s more undemocratic than having a caucus: not having an election at all! Yet that’s exactly what caucus states are reduced to — electoral non-entities that effectively did not vote — if you count only the states that held primaries.
That’s without even getting into the fact that, coincidentally, pretty much all of the demographically Hillary-friendly states held primaries (and indeed, several of them got "bonus" delegates for voting late in the process), whereas a bunch of demographically Obama-friendly states held caucuses. So the "delegates earned through primaries" are hardly a fair or representative sample of the country. If all states had held primaries, Obama’s pledged-delegate lead would be narrower (because his percentage margins in the caucus states would have been smaller), but he’d still be ahead, not behind as in Hillary’s phony metric (because he still would have won those states). Moreover, Obama’s popular-vote lead would be wider (because his raw vote margins in the caucus states would have been larger, since vastly more people would have voted). This is all hypothetical and speculative, of course, but it has a firmer basis in reality than Hillary’s utter, shameless nonsense.
And then, of course, there are the contradictions inherent in Hillary’s position. For example, Michigan’s primary was also incredibly undemocratic, unrepresentative and unfair, since only one major candidate was on the ballot, and since most voters didn’t bother to show up (or voted in the other party’s primary) because they knew the primary didn’t count. Yet Hillary wants to count that undemocratic primary — in fact, she wants to give herself a Soviet-style 328,309 to zero victory in it — while simultaneously excluding all the caucuses, which (unlike Michigan) fully complied with the rules, on the basis that they are undemocratic. Obviously, that makes no sense.
But then, we’re well beyond the point where we should expect Hillary Clinton to make sense, or be internally consistent, or remotely rational, or morally defensible, in her pursuit of power. So I guess I’m just wasting my breath.
P.P.S. In case anyone’s wondering, here is the full list of states whose voters are disenfranchised by Hillary’s "delegates earned through primaries" metric for ascertaining the popular will: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii (gee, do you think Obama would have won by a huge popular-vote landslide in a primary there?), Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. Needless to say, with the possible exception of Nevada, every single one of those is an Obama-friendly state, and if they’d held primaries, he almost certainly — given the "demography is destiny" nature of this campaign — would have won ‘em all.
Any method of counting the votes (or the delegates) that excludes any of these states is inherently and facially illegitimate, and the fact that she would even attempt to make such an offensive argument is itself a independently sufficient reason to deny her the nomination.
|
Categories: Election 2008
|
May 28th, 2008 at 12:35:54 pm
Does anyone else get the feeling that Hillary is like Hitler in his Berlin bunker surrounded by sycophantic true believers as he moves phantom divisions on a map long since overrun by allied offensives?
No? Oh, it’s just me then. My bad.
May 28th, 2008 at 12:56:28 pm
No Swarthington, I don’t think that Hillary is like Hitler. Here’s why:
1.) Hitler, in May 1945, had sharply limited capacity to still do damage. Hillary–not so much.
2.) Hitler, in May 1945, had about as much chance of accomplishing his objectives as I do waking up in Bill Gates’ body tomorrow. Like that rather crazy outcome, said success would probably require divine intervention on a Biblical (e.g., parting of Red Sea, raising from the dead, dropping plagues on Egypt) level.
In contrast, in order for Hillary to achieve her goals, there simply needs to occur any one or combination of three events, none of which would require divine intervention:
A.) Howard Dean and the rest of the Dem leadership blinks;
B.) The superdelegates decide to reverse the will of the people;
C.) Hillary deploys a thermonuclear oppo research (or outright lie) in late July that shakes up the actual _delegates_ and leads to multiple ballots at the convention. After the third ballot, realizing the crazy woman’s not going away and her supporters are not going to be moved, Obama’s supporters cave.
Ergo, once more, Hillary is not like Hitler.
3.) Hitler was both incompetent and impotent, which is part of the reason he ended up in the bunker in the first place. Hillary, on the other hand, has a Stalinist ruthlessness, dedicated core constituency, and the opportunity to throw down in a floor fight in order to achieve her goals. Quicker than you can say, “Um, Hamlet, do you think it’s a good idea to duel with the _poison_ swords…”, Hillary will engage in a fratricidal engagement at the convention, party be da*ned.
In other words, in order for your analogy to work, the Nazis would have had a Doomsday device with the Fuhrer’s finger on the trigger.
4.) The Fuhrer had no one in which he could call on to save him. Hillary, on the other hand, has the disaffected voters she has all but begged to “rid her of this troublesome candidate.” People can say whatever they want about her “not having meant what people said she meant,” but pardon me if I believe that about as much as I believe abstinence only sex education is effective.
So no, unlike the late lamented Fuhrer, Hillary is still _very_ much in this and is not moving “shadow divisions” but ruthlessly playing the hand she has been dealt. That she is _still playing_ is an indictment of what passes for leadership in the Dem Party, but then again I just work here.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:13:54 pm
Hmmmm. Thoughtful response, Youngblai.
Intrade gives Hillary an 8% chance to win the nomination. Perhaps Hitler in his bunker had only a 2-3% chance to pull a miracle out of his ass. So admittedly the comparison is a bit exaggerated.
But I still say short of Hillary pulling a Vince Foster on Obama, the nomination is his.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:29:42 pm
If you want to compare Hillary to Hitler I think your timeframe is off. Hillary is at the point Hitler was just before he acheived absolute power– Just two small twists away actually.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:49:54 pm
Swarthington,
On Hitler having a 2-3% chance, I hope you mean miracle = escaping alive. I’d dare say you could spot the Germans the Battlestar Galactica in May 1945 and it just…wouldn’t…have…mattered. (”Comrade Stalin, there is an object in near orbit. They say they have nuclear weapons…” “What are these “nuclear weapons,” and why am I still waiting on the report of Hitler’s emasculation?”)
Interestingly, I think you underestimate Hillary’s chances. I’d say she’s got at least a 30% chance. People with an 8% chance don’t loan their campaign millions of dollars. Likewise, her actions and statements are those of someone whose going to the mattresses on this one. I think her supporters are far more rabid than the other side (when it’s Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks, bet on the ones who brought the knives to the discussion) and I think that they will turn the convention into a nuthouse. The numbers are close enough that you might have some superdelegates get scared (never underestimate a mob’s powers of persuasion) and all it takes is for a stampede to start.
In other words, if it goes to the convention, all bets are off. Which is why the Dems need to keep this from going to the convention–because dueling at ten paces with nuclear hand grenades doesn’t lead to a winner, it just leads to a really nifty sound and light show.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:26:11 pm
Youngblai,
HA! Battlestar Gallactica, there’s an image.
The Hillary 8% chance is an Intrade number, meaning it’s a market driven number based upon where people are actually risking their money. Who am I to say you are not smarter than the market?
Recall that when Hillary loaned her campaign millions, her chances of winning were significantly better (well before North Carolina). And while I agree with you that Hillary intends to go the the mattress on this one (if you paid an $11 million cover charge, you’d stay until they turned the lights out on you and the bouncer dragged you out), I would disagree with you on her chances of prevailing.
Bottom line: The supers know that if they let Hillary ’steal’ the nomination, they will alienate key constituencies (blacks, young voters) and will ruin their chances in the general election.
I know it’s hard to think like a megalomaniac, but we must if we are to correctly interpret Hillary’s statements and actions.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:30:54 pm
First, youngblai, Battlestar Galactica showed up at Earth in 1980, so we can’t just give it to Hitler 35 years earlier, that just makes your whole scenario suddenly implausible ;-)
Second, congratulations to everyone for having a discussion which involved Hitler that didn’t invoke Godwin’s Law. I don’t think i’ve ever seen that occur outside a history class!
May 28th, 2008 at 2:55:00 pm
yawwwwwwwwn…. hillary semi-relevance lasts another ~10 days. after the primaries end hillary will either withdraw of a flood of superdelgates will give obama a clinch on the nomination, maybe even close enough to the ~2200 delegate mark that includes michigan/florida.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:09:05 pm
For what it’s worth, I think 8% is way too high (and 30% is lunacy). I’d put Hillary’s chances somewhere around 1%. Maybe, maybe 2%, if you think a “July surprise” (i.e., a political calamity that absolutely and undeniably destroys Obama’s chances — Reverend Wright times 1,000) is more likely than I do.
The only reason the odds would be higher than 1-2% would be if you factor in the odds of assassination, or some other untimely death/incapacitation scenario (and, again, if you think those odds are greater than I do). Moreover, particularly if it were an assassination or any other type of suspicious scenario, I think Hillary’s chances of getting the nomination in that event would be far less than 100%, largely because of her RFK comment (and the unfair media interpretation hereof). If, God forbid, such a tragedy were to occur, there would be a strong grassroots resistance among Obama supporters to giving Hillary the nomination because of the unfortunate perceptions that were created by her RFK remark. (The conspiracy theories would be much more widespread than among just the Vince Foster and 9/11 Truth crowds. I can imagine polls showing that 10% of whites and 60% of blacks think Hillary did it.) I think Al Gore might very well take it in that (horrible) event, or maybe Edwards, or whoever Obama chose as his runningmate (if that announcement had been made already). I guess you’d have to give Hillary the edge, just because she’s got like 45% of the delegates or whatever as fierce loyalists, but still. I don’t think she would just waltz to the nomination if a tragedy were to occur. And anyway, I’d say the odds of such a thing happening in the first place are well below 1%. And yes, I feel kind of dirty even speculating about this as a numbers game, but that’s where we are. Damn you, Hillary/MSM!
Anyway… yeah, 8% is way too high. The market is wrong on this one. A one-in-twelve likelihood that the superdelegates will spontaneously decide to reverse the will of the people and take the nomination away from the first African-American candidate? No. Freakin. Way.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:34:20 pm
Brendan - the “first African-American candidate” aspect just went academic, since Cynthia McKinney became the Green Party Nominee for President … she has the female *and* the African-American aspects in one, something neither Hillary nor Barack can do …
May 28th, 2008 at 5:13:31 pm
Alasdair: you are missing his point. His point is you eviscerate the democratic party if you screw an african american out of a legitimately won nomination.
What does Hillary get now amongst black voters? 8-10%? What do you think she’ll get in the general amongst black voters if she steals the election? She’ll be lucky if she can keep 8-10%.
At which points she loses, nullifying her whole “I’m the better general election candidate” theory.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:21:05 pm
Brendan,
i don’t see the logic in your conclusion that Hillary is stating that “more delegates earned through primaries” = “more people have cast their votes for me.” the parts of the letters you posted don’t come close to that link.
granted, i didn’t read the entire letters, just the parts you posted, so maybe you’re referencing something i haven’t read.
it’s pretty obvious that she’s continuing to use a “popular vote victory” in her attempt to convince the supers to vote for her… but now she’s ADDING a “more delegates earned through primaries” element to the argument.
i’ll agree with you that not counting the caucus state popular vote makes her argument a contradiction. however, you have to admit that if she’s able to convince enough supers that she wins the nomination (which has almost no chance of happening), the victory would be perfectly fair.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:43:47 pm
Brendan,
I will say that you have more faith in the physical, moral courage of the supers than I. Note that my 30% is based on the convention being a madhouse and, quite frankly, Hillary having more rabid supporters than Obama (hence the Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks analogy).
Also, you have much higher faith in the “lack of a whackjob” factor. Look how many folks believe that Obama is a closet Muslim / shares his preacher’s views / etc.. Sorry, but just because there’s no fire and heat there doesn’t mean that there aren’t folks quietly out there plotting. Like you, I hate that we have to even speculate on this more than usual, but with Hillary doing everything but putting the laser designator on Obama I think we have to bump the factor a little bit higher.
David K.–I was meaning the current Galactica, not her earlier incarnation. Sorry, but if I’m going to have someone providing me with orbital bombardment it’s not going to be a vessel where “point defense” is some corrugated tubing and “missile batteries” is recycled film of a Saturn V launch. I won’t even get into the, “Um, sure, we’ll trust some random captain who shows up with a peace deal from our foe we’ve been fighting for 1000 years”-issue. Not that the current humans are exactly much smarter. *lowers geek flag*
Finally, I’d put Hillary’s chances at 1-2% if she wasn’t running around with almost half the delegates–and that’s assuming nothing crazy happens at the Rules Committee meeting. If something goes awry there, now we’re talking a barroom brawl with the lights turned out (bonus points if you get the historial alliteration there) come the convention. As many a person whose fought in the dark can tell you, it’s not about numbers at that point–it’s about luck and whose crazier. You tell me which candidate you think is crazier at this point–my choice tends to go with Easter pantsuit ensemble and has an ex-President for a husband.
In other words, in an ideal world you’d be right…but let me know when you find one, as I’d like to move.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:09:18 pm
Oh, btw, there’s some great analysis on Hillary actually performing better in swing-states (i.e., the ones the Dems have to take to actually win in November). By performing better, I mean she’s got a 4-5% lead on McCain in some places while Obama trails him.
So, tell me again how the Supers are going to say, “You know what? Screw November, screw this howling mob, we’re going to stand by our principles.” Because I’m not feeling that vibe. Why? If the Supers were that sure, that adamant, they would have already declared in order to avoid getting sucked into the black hole rapidly forming in Denver’s vicinity.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:55:52 pm
Youngblai - I wonder who will be the first to take offence at your use of the wording “black hole” to refer to Obama Clinton heading for Denver …
Personally, I’m still expecting the Superdelegates to defect to Senator Clinton at the Convention itself … how long did she have all those FBI files (with no explanation provided) in the White House back in the ’90s ?
May 28th, 2008 at 7:46:50 pm
No one Alasdair, the rest of us are far more interested in the substantive arguments than some stupid gotchas like you are.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:54:22 pm
Why, Davidkins … I didn’t know you cared !
Substantive, eh - like arguing about the date that Battlestar Galactica showed up at Earth in 1980 … still, for *you*, dear, that is substantive argument … keep up the good work !
May 28th, 2008 at 8:58:07 pm
See, there is a difference between humor and just being stupid Al, you need to work on that.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:52:27 pm
Look Alasdair, just because you apparently don’t have a geek flag is no reason to start picking on those of us who fly ours proudly. ;)
May 28th, 2008 at 10:27:23 pm
And don’t call another man “Dear.” (I’ve got your back, Davie).
May 29th, 2008 at 12:33:20 am
This was a good substantive discussion of the issues (Battlestar Galactica included).
And then Alasdair showed up.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:56:46 pm
kos owning clinton
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/29/21457/9858/148/524626
May 29th, 2008 at 8:06:35 pm
Youngblai - I’ve been a mainframe computer geek way since back before it became fashionable … (grin) … who do you think invented the geek flag ?
As for others who proudly fly their geek flag (and who don’t just have it set in the genes), with most of ‘em, we can enjoy jousting … then, however, there’s the D-list …
May 29th, 2008 at 8:13:01 pm
David - I was wondering how long it would take to use the trite “there is a difference between humor and just being stupid “ - the tired old “I was innocently being humorous, and *you* just don’t get humour” shtick …
Wobbly - I’m sure you and “Davie” will make a cute couple …
(grin)