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Here is a perfect reflection of my feelings and thoughts about this Democratic Primary race.
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Obama's TKO
June 04, 2008
By Jay Cost
Last night's events were a microcosm of this whole nomination battle. Barack Obama obtained the endorsement of a sufficient number of superdelegates to clinch the nomination. This was despite the fact that he and Clinton - once again - split the contests at stake. Clinton carried South Dakota easily. Obama carried Montana easily.
In the wake of the 1968 convention in Chicago - the Democratic Party opened the nomination process to the public at large. The Republicans followed suit a few years later, and today there is a wide and deep sense that what V.O. Key called "the party in the electorate" chooses each party's presidential nominee.
This year, the Democratic party in the electorate has split right down the middle. We saw that last night, just as we have seen it all season long. If you count up the votes from all contests where both candidates were on the ballot, and include caucus estimates, you come up with Obama having a lead in the popular vote of 151,844 votes out of nearly 36 million cast for the two of them. However, that excludes Michigan, a state with up to 2.3 million Democratic voters that did choose between the two candidates. So, as it stands there is no way to know whom the party in the electorate generally prefers.
This speaks to an important point. There is a thing called public opinion. It is what it is, whether we are aware of it or not. It is "out there" somewhere. We only have imperfect ways to measure it. We have public opinion polls, which as we all know are imperfect. We also have elections, which like polls are metrics for gauging public opinion. These can be imperfect, too. When the difference between support for candidates is very small, it may be that the electoral process cannot determine which candidate's support is greater. After all, the electoral process is the creation of human beings with their own interests and agendas. It is possible for measurement problems to occur. Something like this happened this year. There was an excruciatingly close division between the candidates - and the imperfection of the Democratic nomination process, wherein Michigan was not fully included in the contest, means that we are unable to determine who actually had the greater support. As far as we know, the vote was split.
Thus, Obama has won the Democratic nomination not because his voting coalition is larger than Clinton's. As best we can tell, they are of equal size. Instead, Obama has won because his coalition is more efficient at producing delegates than Clinton's coalition. Obama's relatively narrow vote lead has produced a relatively wide pledged delegate lead, which has in turn produced an even wider lead in superdelegates. The following chart indicates this point by measuring the number of votes per pledged delegate. The idea here is that, the lower the number of votes per pledged delegate, the more delegates a single vote produces for the candidate, and therefore the more efficient a candidate's coalition is.
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As we can see - Obama's voters are worth more delegates. Put precisely, there are 10,237 voters for every Obama pledged delegate and 10,807 voters for every Clinton pledged delegate. That's a difference in Obama's favor of 570 voters per delegate. That might not seem like it would make a big difference, but it most certainly has. If the "votes per pledged delegate" metric were equal for Clinton and Obama - Obama's pledged delegate lead would drop from 106 to 12.
[Note that the popular vote used in the above chart does not include the Michigan vote while the delegate counts do include the Michigan delegates. This was done to account for the fact that the Rules and Bylaws Committee did not use the Michigan vote to estimate the delegate allocation. If we were to include the Michigan vote by allocating to Obama the uncommitted, Obama's voters actually become more efficient.]
Does any of this mean that Clinton, not Obama, "should" be the nominee? No. By our imperfect metrics for measuring the opinions of the public, we must conclude that there is no clear public choice.
So, Obama has scored what amounts to a TKO. He won on points. He did not score a knockout. Clinton's invocation of "18 million votes" last night reminded me of Jake LaMotta's taunt of Sugar Ray Robinson in Raging Bull, "You didn't get me down, Ray!" Indeed, Obama won the nomination on a night that Clinton still managed to win another contest.
From this, I would suggest that, as a prelude to unifying the party, both sides need to be a little modest.
The Clinton people need to recognize that it is not coincidence that Obama's vote was more efficient. I have discussed this before. Part of this had to do with the fact that the delegate allocation system contains biases that happened to favor Obama. However, part of it had to do with the fact that the Obama campaign had a better understanding of the system. It found the possibilities and made the most of them. What's more, the Clinton campaign let it do this. Simply put, Obama out-maneuvered Clinton. Clinton supporters need to respect this.
Meanwhile, Obama supporters need to recognize that their candidate is the victor not because he put together a majority coalition, but because he out-maneuvered Clinton. This was a highly intelligent strategy, but it was not a grand feat of majority building. Obama supporters need to recognize that their candidate won not because "the people had their say," but because his campaign out-smarted her campaign. Accordingly, they need to respect the candidate whom they could not beat in a straight-up fight for votes. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/hor...bamas_tko.html
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If your sword's too short, add to its length by taking one step forward.
I agree with everything that the article says. You had a very close race, but, in regards to the end game, it appears that Obama has crossed the threshold to have a majority of delegates.
So, reading into the article a bit Joe, do you feel that Obama out maneuvered Clinton, and is thus undeserving of the nomination? Or do you simply feel that Clinton is the stronger candidate?
I agree with everything that the article says. You had a very close race, but, in regards to the end game, it appears that Obama has crossed the threshold to have a majority of delegates.
So, reading into the article a bit Joe, do you feel that Obama out maneuvered Clinton, and is thus undeserving of the nomination? Or do you simply feel that Clinton is the stronger candidate?
I conceded long ago but I still feel she is the stronger candidate. He is deserving of the nomination but I feel her support and base represents the democratic party better.
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If your sword's too short, add to its length by taking one step forward.
I've heard a number of GOP advisors and pundits say that to out-flank the Clintons, not to mention out-funding them, is far more impressive to a lot of Republican party higher-ups than it seems to be to Dems. They're tough, mean, slick, and started with a really big lead.
It took the Clintons right to the last month or so to figure out a strategy that worked -- about when I guess they changed strategists big-time instead of tinkering -- and maybe if they had another four or five primaries, they would have eclipsed Obama. Too little too late.
But now Hillary needs to look ahead -- not to VP, probably not cabinet where she'd be submerged unless it's a major portfolio -- she can forge a much brighter status in the Senate for a run in 4 or 8 years (basically take on Kennedy's role as party leader in the Senate), but she has to do a few things --
1) make Obama supporters forgive her, because we detest her, and she's going to need to draw on his grassroots supporters as they mature.
2) convince the Dem leadership that party comes before her personal ego for the time being.
3) build an unassailable portfolio of accomplishments -- be the one who shepherds major Dem programs through the system, become a foreign policy face for the Obama admin on key issues (think Gore on environment, Hillary on disarmament or something).
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oderint dum metuant (Latin for 'let them hate, so long as they fear').
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
I've heard a number of GOP advisors and pundits say that to out-flank the Clintons, not to mention out-funding them, is far more impressive to a lot of Republican party higher-ups than it seems to be to Dems. They're tough, mean, slick, and started with a really big lead.
It took the Clintons right to the last month or so to figure out a strategy that worked -- about when I guess they changed strategists big-time instead of tinkering -- and maybe if they had another four or five primaries, they would have eclipsed Obama. Too little too late.
But now Hillary needs to look ahead -- not to VP, probably not cabinet where she'd be submerged unless it's a major portfolio -- she can forge a much brighter status in the Senate for a run in 4 or 8 years (basically take on Kennedy's role as party leader in the Senate), but she has to do a few things --
1) make Obama supporters forgive her, because we detest her, and she's going to need to draw on his grassroots supporters as they mature.
2) convince the Dem leadership that party comes before her personal ego for the time being.
3) build an unassailable portfolio of accomplishments -- be the one who shepherds major Dem programs through the system, become a foreign policy face for the Obama admin on key issues (think Gore on environment, Hillary on disarmament or something).
Most Dems in the senate hated her before she tried to destroy the party. One theme I've been hearing over the last couple of months is that Hillary wouldn't give up because she had nowhere else to go. It would take her 20 years to gain the kind of power that Ted Kennedy has in the senate.
The only way I see her getting back in the good graces of the party is to throw all her her support behind Obama and help him get elected. If he loses a close election she will go down in history as the woman that destroyed the Democratic party.
yeah, yeah...the source. But I tend to agree with the findings, looking at his votes. He's more centrist in his spoken words, and his voting patterns, than HRC. And that's WAAAAAY fine with me.
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I'm the anti-TNT. I don't do drama.
yeah, yeah...the source. But I tend to agree with the findings, looking at his votes. He's more centrist in his spoken words, and his voting patterns, than HRC. And that's WAAAAAY fine with me.
Hmmm. According to this web-site, Obama was #1 in 2007:
Yes 40, but you missed this point...He "says" he's a centrist so it must be so... Remember, Obama is different than every other politician this country has ever known...
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