On the Everywhere-But-Michigan-Florida Question
A politician:
Hillary Clinton has won states with about 260 electoral votes. Barack Obama has won states with about 190. And we decide the presidency not by a popular vote, we decide it by the electoral vote. And the traditional role of the superdelegates is to determine who’s going to be our strongest candidate.
…
[Clinton]‘s clearly the strongest candidate in the states that Democrats must win to have a chance. Look, it’s great that Barack Obama is doing wonderfully well in Wyoming and Utah and, and places like that, but there’s no chance we’re going to carry those states. Whether he gets 44 percent as opposed to 39 percent doesn’t matter, but we’re not going to carry those states.
Care to guess whom this politician supports?
There are a few interconnected lies being tossed about here. Let’s try to untangle them:
–The transitive law of inequality does not state that, “if a>b and c>b, then a>c.” Neither does the law of identity state that, “since a=a and b=b, then a=b.” The notion that, because Clinton beat Obama in elector-rich states does not mean that McCain would also beat Obama in those states. It does not even imply that Clinton could beat McCain in those states. The nominating process is what it is; the national campaign is what it is. That does not mean that each is the other. Any suggestion to the contrary is a disingenuous appeal to logic-illiterate simpletons.
–That “260 electoral vote count” includes Michigan and Florida. Liar, liar, ballot on fire. (It also includes Pennsylvania, which hasn’t even voted yet! Go figure — just not with any legitimate arithmetic.)
–As I have blogged previously, it seems to me (though my extreme lack of partisan bias may make me, um, extremely biased) that the role of the superdelegate is to do what is in the best interests of the party, and that “the best interests of the party” would undeniably be to nominate Obama. This is true even if one honestly believes that Clinton would also beat McCain, because one must also consider the down-ticket implications of a Clinton nomination.
“The best interests of the party” means not only taking the White House, but also winning seats in Congress and at the state and local level. Given the dual GOP-voter prongs of: (a) “vote against Clinton; stay home for Obama” (especially in “can’t win” states like Wyoming and Utah), and (b) “vote the ticket all the way down,” it seems obvious that even if one assumes that either Clinton or Obama could beat McCain, Obama is still the better candidate “for the party.” Perhaps it’s true that “Obama can’t take Utah,” but having him rather than Clinton on the ballot might increase the chance of electing a Democratic House member, or even a county executive or mayor or dog catcher. To a superdelegate, that ought to matter. Even if Clinton could win states that Obama could not (how that might happen is never specified), that still doesn’t mean that it would be foolish for Democrats to prefer Obama on the ticket in those states.
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More from the politician:
If you’re a caucus, older people can’t vote, older people who vote by absentee ballot. There’s no absentee ballots in a caucus. Tim, if you’re a shift worker and a lot of our workers, because they’re low-income workers, are shift workers, you can’t vote in a caucus. So we want primaries. That’s the way we elect presidents. We don’t have caucuses to elect presidents in the fall.
First off, it’s a bit silly to suggest that older people are less likely to caucus than the electorate at large, given that older people have nothing better to do and most are not bed-ridden. To suggest otherwise is a disingenuous “Social Security style” pander to the gerontocracy, pure and simple.
More importantly, we again see the bait-and-switch between what’s “fair” in a primary and what’s “fair” in a general election. There is no right to vote in a primary. A political party, as a private association, cannot “disenfranchise” anyone in the way that the government can.
As I mentioned previously, if you don’t like the rules of the Democratic Party (or any other party), then might I suggest not belonging to one? Trust me, it doesn’t hurt.
Similar Posts:
- Some Political Predictions
- The Democrats’ Two “Bush v. Gore” Conundrums
- Schumer’s Moment of Truth
- Nevada Democrats’ Strange “Union v. Union” Lawsuit
- On the Michigan-Florida Question
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