Who is actually choosing the Democratic Presidential Nominee?
Feb 26th, 2008 at 11:22 am by PSoTD
For your reference, posted at Corrente.
I really think that at the end of the day, Democrats are going to have to look at this primary process and consider overhauls to the process. There are complaints about inclusion and exclusion of voters, there are complaints about the order of primary events and the great stacking of events on one day, and there are complaints about the superdelegate process, all which deserve a hearing, discussion, and resolution. There are more complaints beyond that, but you get the idea.
That’ll have to happen after the general election at both the state and national level, and the process ought to include everyone that’s interested as a Democrat. That means that the news media ought to be included in the process, and that Democrats - those of us that care about a fair primary process with protections for voters - should be invited to be involved, and should become involved. Bloggers in particular should be maintaining complaints and suggested improvements for that discussion.
A lot of things in the election process have to be overhauled, certainly.
But in referring to the Democratic primary process, why do the media have a right to be involved in the structuring of it? I haven’t noticed that they’ve particularly been anyone’s friend, for quite a while. My feeling is that they have enough power as it is.
They only need to be involved as far as it’s in the open, that information can be distributed both up and down the line. They’re in a reporting mode only.
The media is already choosing the candidates … I don’t think they see the process as broken at all.
The figures posted at that corrente blog are seriously misleading. I ran the numbers on registered Democratic voters in the primaries (not caucuses) so far, and - neglecting Florida and Michigan - Hillary leads 49.2% to 47.4%, not 50% to 44%. (If you include Florida and Michigan, which I think would be wrong, the numbers are 49.8% and 46.1%)
But even that is misleading, because neglecting the caucuses (which Obama won handily) fails to count the Democrats who voted for him there. The problem is, I can’t come up with a convincing way to estimate popular sentiment among Dem voters from the caucus results.
As to the larger point, registered Republicans have played a trivial role in the Democratic primary. Independents have cast 22% of the votes - and about 64% of them voted for Obama.
The argument that Hillary has won more registered Democrats is false; the truth is we don’t know exactly what the totals are because caucuses muddy the picture, although both Hillary and Obama have won big Democratic majorities in primary states.
The argument that registered Republicans are picking the Democratic nominee are flatly false.
The argument that open primaries are suddenly illegitimate is another example of people who want to change the rules in the middle of the game - like seating the Florida and Michigan delegates - in order to win. It’s completely unprincipled.
I’m not supporting the Corrente post in any way other than to say that if we want to have such things as total “Democrat” sentiment, then the primary system has to be set up in a way to measure that. The National Party, the state parties, and legislatures have to be on the same page on this in order to make such a thing work. Mithras is exactly right about how the rules are established now, and that they have to be followed, otherwise the entire primary system is a sham. In fact, that’s my biggest problem with the whole concept of superdelegates and how the discussion was that they could decide the result - unless there was truly a statistical tie, THAT would make the primary system a sham as far as I’m concerned.
The primary system has been set up for years to come up with a quick winner. Whether it’s been by design or by accident, that’s how it has worked. It doesn’t have enough thought into whether that’s a good thing, and how should the system orderly proceed if there isn’t a quick winner. Most of all, the apples and oranges of state processes makes it clear that the process isn’t measuring the same thing every time. Is that good or bad, and if it’s bad, how does it get changed? That should be a main discussion of the Party after the general election.
FYI:
http://ivrpolls.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=1
Among respondents who were asked about Obama v McCain or Huckabee, 15% of those that would vote Obama in the primary would vote GOP in the general. That is a substantial number of voters who would vote against the same candidate in the general that they were voting for in the primary. Among those that were asked about Clinton v McCain or Huckabee, 6% of Clinton’s primary voters would vote against Clinton in the GE.
On the merits of closed v. open, no Republican or Democrat ever wins the Presidency without winning independents. Party identification is fluid. I can see arguments why open primaries would be good in states with fewer Democrats than Republicans or with large percentages of independents (because you’d have an even greater need independents to reach a majority, so having their input on the nominee would be relevant). And in states with Democratic majorities, the argument would be that closed primaries would be more appropriate. But I don’t think it’s wise or correct to say that only registered Democratic voters should decide who the Democratic nominee is.
Also, as the Florida & Michigan problem this year shows, the DNC has very little power to force state parties to do anything. It’s not even clear that this time around the DNC will be successful in enforcing the restriction against scheduling primaries too early. Each state party has its own reasons for holding a caucus v. primary, and open v. closed contests. Those whose system backed the eventual nominee will not see a problem with how things worked out. So while dialog on the issue isn’t useless, it will be very difficult to get state parties to all do it the same way.
So while dialog on the issue isn’t useless, it will be very difficult to get state parties to all do it the same way.
It’s more than just the parties - the OTHER party can intentionally throw a monkeywrench into it if they run the legislature and Governor’s office by scheduling an election either at a time not agreed upon or in addition to a caucus. And I do think it will be hard to get state parties to do it the same way - probably impossible.
But the discussion is necessary. Things like what happened in Florida and Michigan cannot happen again. I think the SuperDuperMega Tuesday concept should be avoided if at all possible. Relying on superdelegates makes me barf, and I don’t want to do that every four years.
I agree that there are too many superdelegates. Atrios suggested 5% would be better than the current 20%. I don’t know if that’s the right number, or what.
This is buying heavily into the either/or two-party system. I guess however I look at it, any piece that needs to be fixed has a potential for actually tearing down the system if it’s looked at hard enough. House of cards, Jenga, whatever.
for what it’s worth, i’ve been arguing over in the corrente thread.
snuzy-
I registered to comment over there, but they haven’t approved me yet. Which is probably a good thing, because of the name-calling. You calmly, convincingly made the basic point you were trying to make, and in return you’re getting called stupid. There’s no point in arguing with people like that.
upyernoz-
Nice wrap-up comment you left over at corrente.
I crunched the caucus numbers to try to come up with a rational estimate of Democratic voter support for each candidate. To do so, I calculated a median turnout percentage for primaries so far of 40%. If you assume that the average margin of victory in the caucus states would have been 5% if they had had primaries, Obama picks up at least 85,000 votes more than Clinton. If the assumed margin of victory is 10%, he picks up at least 150,000 votes more than her.
But in trying to nail down the caucus ambiguity, I realized there is another, more basic ambiguity that blows it out of the water and makes this whole exercise pointless: Eight primary states and one caucus state do not have registered party affiliations, at all! Over 38 million registered voters! Riddle me this: How many registered Democrats voted in the primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin? The answer is the same for all of them: Zero, because there are no registered Democrats in those states. So what the hell have I been adding up? Exit poll percentages - which are subject to sampling error themselves, by the way - of voters’ self-reported party affiliation.
The whole thing is stoopid.
Clinton There Is No Way to Tell Who Leads in Democratic Votes Cast So Far…
[Update 2/27: After getting sucked into this discussion (where I can’t comment because they haven’t approved my registration) by way of this post, I went ahead and tried to come up with a rational estimate of popular support among registered…