If The System Made Sense
Apr 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am by Susie
Clinton would be far ahead, Sean Wilentz argues:
Apr. 07, 2008 | The continuing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about democracy. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its candidate stands for a transformative, participatory new politics. It has vaunted Obama’s narrow lead in the overall popular vote in the primaries to date, as well as in the count of elected delegates, as the definitive will of the party’s rank and file. If, while heeding the party’s rules, the Democratic superdelegates overturn those majorities, Obama’s supporters claim, they will have displayed a cynical contempt for democracy that would tear the party apart.
These arguments might be compelling if Obama’s leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process, as well as on some blatantly anti-democratic maneuvers by the Obama campaign. Obama’s advantage hinges on a system that, whatever the actual intentions behind it, seems custom-made to hobble Democratic chances in the fall. It depends on ignoring one of the central principles of American electoral politics, one that will be operative on a state-by-state basis this November, which is that the winner takes all. If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have a commanding lead in the delegate count, one that will only grow more commanding after the next round of primaries, and all questions about which of the two Democratic contenders is more electable would be moot.
Come on Susie. If the rules were different, Obama would have played by them too and who knows if Clinton would be ahead.
I have been willing to give Hillary a chance, but I am not enthralled by her campaign’s consistent attempts to change the rules mid-game in a contest that was set up in advance to favor her in the first place.
She’s getting beat, fair and square, according to rules she signed on to and that she thought would favor her for the nom. Welcome to the bigs.
And if money grew on trees, we’d all be rich.
When viewed by one year olds, I actually appear quite tall. I’m beginning to like this game.
And while I never signed on to this approach as the way to save democracy, wasn’t there a lot of hullabaloo a few years ago about how “horse race/winner take all” electoral politics were dysfunctional, that we needed those “first, second and third choice” procedures that Professor Guinier and others championed? Proportional voting seems closer to that ideal–and designed, it seems, to create gridlock when the stars are aligned just so.
But, as they say, if my mother had wheels she’d be a shopping cart.
Susie, I’ve long remembered you as a member of the democratic wing of the democratic party, and these post hoc rationalizations seem a bit silly in that light.
Consider that progressives have long argued in favor of institutional change that would allow actually progressive politicians to get elected; measures like instant run-off or a truely representative house (ie seats awarded according to % of vote won).
As it is now, the system clearly disenfranchises any party that can’t muster a 50%+1 coalition state-wide, and this results in the watering down of progressive agendas.
Now, many of those same progressives are arguing in support of a more establishment-favoring system because they believe that it offers a rationale for a Clinton candidacy.
For all their problems, caucus’s and their viability requirements allow people to actually stand up for their preferred candidate without losing their vote (edwards, dodd, etc..).
The bottom line is that this newfound love for front loading a winner take all national primary, which would inevitablly give us a media corronated (by name ID) candidate every four years, stinks a little bit coming from certain quarters.
why does a winner-take-all system “make sense” whereas a proportional representation system does not? that’s what wilentz argument comes down to, all he’s really doing is holding up the electoral college as if it is the model of sensible democracy.
the electoral college system sucks, so does the existing primary system for allocating delegates. if you make the system more like the electoral college, it would still suck, just like the electoral college sucks already.
What sucks are caucuses. If my state had caucuses I’d never be able to participate.
These arguments might be compelling if Obama’s leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process
Such as ‘who has the most votes,’ ‘who has won the most states,’ ‘who has won the most pledged delegates…’
The point Wilentz was making is that Clinton has thousands more voters per delegate than Obama does. This is democracy??
the electoral college system sucks, so does the existing primary system for allocating delegates. if you make the system more like the electoral college, it would still suck, just like the electoral college sucks already.
Not only that, but there’s a big difference between a primary WITHIN a party and a general BETWEEN parties. The comparison is apples to oranges from the get-go. Not to mention, as the Clinton camp has made the point a zillion times, that there is no necessary relationship between a candidate winning a primary 55-45 and their ability to win the same state in the general election. So what is the point again for Wilentz? Beyond living in the dubious zone?
The point Wilentz was making is that Clinton has thousands more voters per delegate than Obama does. This is democracy??
no, the primary system isn’t democratic. both primaries and caucuses are really about rewarding party activists (making them delegates, rewarding precinct captains for turning out democratic votes in prior elections, etc) than about just voting for the parties’ choice.
the weird thing is that wilentz isn’t advocating a democratic alternative. a democratic alternative would be to simply vote and give whoever gets the most votes the nomination. instead, wilentz is advocating a different non-democratic alternative, the same system that the republicans use to choose their nominee and the country uses to choose its president in the general election. those aren’t strictly democratic either. if you’re talking a purely popular vote, the outcome still favors obama, not clinton. he’s ahead in the popular vote and it is highly unlikely that clinton will be able to catch up.
If the rules were not proportional and Clinton’s actual vote numbers were switched with Obama’s (meaning Clinton was in 2nd place), surrogates like Wilentz would be arguing it should be proportional. This is why too many lawyers suck and lawyers have taken over the Dem party.
Brendan - if money grew on trees, we’d all have plenty of money but unfortunately it would be devalued so much and therefore we would not be rich. That is a lesson for you from Econ 101.
So what is the point again for Wilentz?
My Greek friend can answer that one:
One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. “Just the thing to quench my thirst,” quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: “I am sure they are sour.”
It is easy to despise what you cannot get.
Wilentz’s “why count the states we can’t win in?” argument also has its problems. Taken to its logical conclusion, the Party should deny seats to the Solid South and the Northern Rockies.
I remember reading the same thing back in 1964, as applied to the Republican Party, which had not won a deep southern state for decades. That, of course, was the year that Goldwater won all of them.
I think Dean’s fifty state strategy makes more sense: after all, how do you expect to ever contend there if you write them off ahead of time? And when would you know whether to allow a red state back in?
And while it may seem to some to be unfair for Clinton to be lagging because of caucuses and primaries in red states, she chose a blockbuster strategy, based on a conclusive win on Super Tuesday that just didn’t happen. It’s not as if the rules changed while the election was underway; the Clinton campaign just didn’t think they needed to worry about the details, like caucuses in Nevada, until they saw the poll numbers looking bad for them.
One more bone to pick: when Wilentz talks about “pressure” from the Hotel Union (called UNITE HERE in the rest of the world, but still the Culinary Union in Vegas) on its members to vote for Obama, it appears that all that he’s talking about is old-fashioned phone banking, flyer, t-shirt and button distribution, and other forms of campaigning organized by the union. Sure some members who are Clinton supporters may not like it, but using spook words like “pressure” and “union” suggests that the goons were threatening to break members’ legs. I have not seen anything that suggests anything of the sort.
Call me oversensitive (I am a union lawyer, so maybe I am), but this is the sort of right wing talking point that Clinton seems to resort to too quickly. From my short stint as a labor lawyer in Arkansas in the 1980s I can tell you that neither Bill nor Hillary has every had a warm spot in their hearts for unions or workers. We never thought of the Rose firm as anything other than a white shoe union-busting firm and her time on the Wal-Mart board was not exactly a profile in courage.
DELETED.
Henry: But come on, in fairness to Sen. Clinton she kept Mark Penn at her side until forced to….oh, wait, that’s not a good example.
Never mind.
In other words, if the Democrats had a winner-take-all system that was as undemocratic as the electoral college, Clinton would be winning. How does that give her moral claim to the nomination?
We should also keep in mind that both candidates would have run completely different campaigns if it were winner-take-all. Obama would not have invested any energy in narrowing her margin in New York, and he probably would have written off New Jersey and Massachusetts entirely too. He would have spent more time in California and focused on either Ohio or Texas instead of both.
if the system made sense….insert just about any comment.
I come here about 2/3 times a day, but these woah is hillary posts are really trying on me man.
Donviti:
THere is a righty blog (Hug Hewitt) that was an unabashed Romney supporter. It turned off many many regulars until Romney lost and the blog returned to normal. I am afraid that is what is hapening here.
Wendi / donviti - there are plenty of blogs that cater to your kind of think…does every blog have to cater to your kind of think?
Rasmussen Reports has an article by Wesley Little that breaks the numbers down very cleanly.
There is a serious inequity in the delegate breakdowns…
for example, in Kansas…Obama received 23 delegates from 27,172 delegates making it 1,181 ‘votes’ per delegate received whereas in New York, Hillary received 139 delegates from 1,003,623 votes making it an average of 7,220 ‘votes’ per delegate received.
The inequity of the system entirely disfavors the populous states and especially the states like NY, CA, NJ, IL, PA, OH where democrats traditionally do well.
In addition, some simple arithmetic tells me that the ‘weighting’ for these states also has a thumb on the scale…
Kansas…
435 districts / 4 House seats * 41 delegates = 4,458.75
New York
435 districts / 29 House seats * 281 delegates = 4,215.00
So not only does it take a hell of a lot less votes to get a delegate in some of these small (and typically red) states, they actually skew to a higher relative value.
Now obviously the rules that are in place this cycle aren’t going to change but some consideration has to be given to this quirky methodology.
While all props must be given to Obama for securing a lot of these red state delegates, it cannot be stated enough that few if any, of these states will contribute to the Democratic electoral college column. Even worse, the delegates from these states are not at all indicative of Obama’s ability to succeed in the general election, especially the ‘battleground’ states.
The narrative that Hillary and her campaign staff is making to ’super’ delegates is quite understandable…that Obama can’t win the general election, thus, they should vote for her. While none of the above, nor the original link provided by Susie makes it all clear, it is clearly part of the calculation why Obama isn’t really leading as much as he wishes everyone to think.
Shorter Wilentz:
If Clinton were running in the Republican nomination race she would be ahead now.
Thanks - but if I wanted Republican values determining the nomination process I wouldn’t be a Democrat.
reality…give it some thought.
plus…virtually certain hrc would lose OH and Mich in a GE…what with selling her soul to the devil of union-busting and free trade backstabbing. Her negatives in Oct were around 40% - my guess is now after the blanant lies on nafta and Penn working union-busting business her negs in midwest blue collar in a GE would hover close to 60-65%. That is not to say they all would vote GOP - but many won’t pull the lever even if itmeans not voting. I grew up in a 3 generation union clan and loyality to the brotherhood comes first.
“it cannot be stated enough that few if any, of these states will contribute to the Democratic electoral college column. ”
and with that attitude, they never will.
Joe…I know that this is hard to contemplate but Obama, like Clinton are politicking on the issue of NAFTA as all of their economic advisors are committed free traders. The only reason you believe Obama is more serious about walking NAFTA back is that he has this curious empty vessel status which allows you to fill in the blanks about his beliefs since he has such a miniscule public record.
“The only reason you believe Obama is more serious about walking NAFTA back is that he has this curious empty vessel status which allows you to fill in the blanks about his beliefs since he has such a miniscule public record.”
The flip side of that argument is that sometimes the devil you don’t know might be better than the one you do. We have a good idea of what Hillary will be like on issues like NAFTA, union rights, drug policy, gay rights and other progressive matters, because we saw first hand how her husband, quite frankly, sold out progressives on those and other issues, and how she herself has done a piss poor job of working on those goals since entering the Senate. Maybe Obama will be as bad or worse, but so far, I haven’t seen any compelling reason to think that other than the insistence of Clinton supporters on the matter.
Everything I’ve seen of Hillary Clinton since beginning her Senate career paints her as a slightly left-of-center, DLC moderate who has an unhealthy fixation on political triangulation (a term that I had never heard applied to politics until Bill Clinton became president). I will vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination, but I am not looking forward to being told that, on a host of progressive issues, I should just shut up and accept the DLC agenda lest we somehow embolden the Republicans, even as the DLC approach to politics hands the Republicans victory after victory.
I get it now. It’s the “if you start counting at 9:07:43 on January 26th 2005, I opposed the war first” argument.
You know the war I voted for, only I didn’t really mean it because I couldn’t imagine that Cheney and Bush would ever mislead us.
That argument.
Yeah, that will work …
white_n_az @ 21: Obama has more votes. More people have gone to the polls and put a check next to his name. Now, if we only count left-handed blue collar workers in states with a “Y” in them, perhaps Clinton is ahead. But in the race where delegates are what matter, as the DNC has mandated it be run, Obama is ahead. In total votes Obama is ahead. Only when you start parsing and creating utterly meaningless qualifications can you show Clinton as the front runner.
Bob @ 29
Whether Obama is ahead in votes is useful only if you have presupposed which votes to count…a rather prescient reminder of the 2000 election.
If you count the votes in MI and FL, then not so much because Clinton is now about even. Yeah, I’m sure that you’re going to say, well we can’t count MI because Obama’s name wasn’t on the ballot (of course ignoring that he took his own name off the ballot) and FL shouldn’t count because neither candidate could officially campaign in FL.
The point is that your argument only holds water if you then take the position that even though record numbers of voters participated in the FL and MI primaries, you aren’t willing to count them.
Indeed Obama is ahead in the pledged delegate counts and it seems unlikely that Clinton will surpass Obama on pleged delegates even after all voting is done but it’s possible for her to do so. That said, it’s obvious that neither candidate will reach the 2025 number of delegates through the rest of the primary and thus the rules are clear that the convention is where this will be decided and it may very well be brokered.
Rather than match your sarcasm with more sarcasm, I think you are conveniently trying to ignore the fact that there are many ways to analyze the voting so far and that some of the analysis methods might actually make an argument of Clinton over Obama and some clearly will not. But the argument has to be made, for the betterment of the party and in deference to the fact that at this point, when you count all of the votes tallied (no matter how hard Obama surrogates want to deny that FL and MI actually voted), that less than 50% of these votes so far have gone for Obama and more than 48% have gone for Clinton AND that after the balance of votes occur, it’s entirely probably that Clinton will have surpassed Obama and by some margin.
The election thus far is much closer than most Obama supporters are willing to admit.
steveboy @ 25
Just the reality of the situation…Democrats don’t spend the time, energy, money politicking in states that they are unlikely to win…that’s simply the reality of it. Perhaps being a distant cousin of Dick Cheney will allow Obama to carry Wyoming…yeah…sure
Joe @ 24
I don’t know about MI but I do recall seeing OH polls at Survey USA showing Obama losing to McCain in a rather large way and Clinton leading McCain. Methinks you are too invested in your own narrative to figure out that things aren’t exactly as you would like to believe…
white–
it’s called the 50 state strategy, I recommend you read about it.
your “strategy” –the one where dems don’t even try in states they just “know” they won’t win, has been losing national elections for us for years.
Obama is ahead in the popular vote.
To whomever mentioned FL and MI. I’m sorry, but even if we disregard the fact that both states lost their delegates for a reason (they ignored the rules), it just isn’t the case that seating them would make the results more “fair.” In Michigan, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballet, and in Florida, no one campaigned! Seating the delegates as is would just be a giant give away to Senator Clinton. Why is this so hard to understand?
And in case Wilentz wasn’t paying attention, a winner-take-all system is far more undemocratic than proportional representation or caucuses. Since, you know, you’re ignoring the will of at least a third - and usually almost half - of the voters.
White_n¬az @ 30 said: “I think you are conveniently trying to ignore the fact that there are many ways to analyze the voting so far and that some of the analysis methods might actually make an argument of Clinton over Obama and some clearly will not.”
And that differs from Bush’s arguments in Florida 2000 how exactly? And please remember, I’m not the one who considers FL 2000 to be a valid comparison – but you do. Either rules are in place and those rules are followed (in which case Gore would have won in 2000 and there is no question who’s ahead in the Democratic primary today) or the rules are flexible and open to all sorts of parsing, in which case Clinton is close but still behind, and Bush rightfully sits in the White House. Now if you want to argue for a real loose, flexible view in 2008, but a strict, legalistic view of the 2000 results go right ahead. Say what you will about my position, at least I am applying a consistent principle.