The Clinton Campaign and the "Popular Vote"

Comments from the Clinton inner circle in the last few days indicate that the Clinton campaign has settled on an end game strategy for the campaign. Are you ready for this? I'm going to go with "no."

Here are the pieces of the puzzle:

* On Saturday, Clinton herself told the Washington Post, "I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for." That same weekend other Clinton operatives echoed these sentiments, signaling that the issue of Florida and Michigan is far from settled.

* A few days later two of her most powerful supporters, in separate interviews, announced that for Clinton to win the nomination she would have to win the popular vote. Pennsylvania congressman and Clinton-backer John Murtha said, "She has to be ahead in the popular vote to have any chance at all of getting this nomination." And speaking on CNBC, New Jersey Gov. John Corzine said, "I'm a very aggressive supporter of Senator Clinton, but I think you need at least a popular vote." Coming from a campaign as tightly on-message as Clinton's, these comments are not politicians chewing the fat with reporters but clear signals of strategic intent.

Not surprisingly, since it is coming from the Clinton campaign, the plan on offer here is a smart one which makes a strategic gambit with a weak hand. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is a disaster for the Democratic Party.

Plan element #1: Have your spokespeople back away from the most far-fetched ideas you have been pushing, such as the idea that superdelegates should support you in the end because you won the primaries in "swing" states, or "big" states, or "important" sates, or non-latte-sipping states, or simply because "Obama can't win" (which in the eyes of Obama supporters translates as "because he's black"). Instead, have your people heave a very public sigh and acknowledge that you cannot win without winning the popular vote, which you acknowledge will be tough but not impossible.

Result: Clinton claims the democratic high-ground, and position herself as the underdog in the "real" test of democracy, the "popular vote."

Plan element #2a: Fight like hell to get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated at the convention. This will come down to a fight at the convention credentials committee, which I outlined in a previous posting.

Plan element #2b: Argue that Michigan and Florida should be included in the "popular vote" regardless of whether the delegations are seated at the convention or not.

Result: elements #2a and #2b dovetail on Plan element #1. Clinton sweeps into the convention as the champion of democracy within the party. The fight over seating Florida and Michigan ends in a horrible mess, positioning Clinton to argue that the delegate count is thus fundamentally flawed and superdelegates should respect party democracy by going with the candidate that won the "popular vote," giving her the nomination as the people's choice.

Is this plan viable? Those of you who think Obama has this thing in the bag had better take a close look at some hard numbers. It turns out that, like everything else in the twisted process of the Democratic primary, the "popular vote" is a dicey concept here.

The current total of "votes" cast in caucuses and primaries is:

Obama 12,891,604
Clinton 12,217,745

This gives Obama an edge of over 650,000 votes, which will be nearly impossible for Clinton to overcome. However, if you add in Michigan (where Obama did not appear on the ballot), and Florida (where he did not campaign at the behest of the party), you get:

Obama 13,460,645
Clinton 13,403,104

This makes a razor-thin margin of slightly more than 50,000 votes, which could easily shift over the course of the last primaries. But wait! You're not done yet! Do caucuses count as "votes?" Throughout the campaign this has been a point of contention, with the Obama campaign putting the weight of its effort into caucuses while Clinton has focused on primaries. Clinton and her spokespeople have repeatedly questioned whether caucuses are really "democratic." And public perception has often gone her way, following the lead of the media. For example, Texas was reported as having been won by Clinton. In fact, Texas had both a primary and caucus. Clinton won the primary, Obama won the caucus. When the two results were added together with whatever bizarre calculator the Texas Democratic Party keeps stored in its closet, Obama came out with more delegates, but the story that ran in the media was that Clinton had "won" Texas.

So, let's give Clinton every break she is asking for, and check out what the "popular vote" total is if we include Texas and Michigan and exclude caucuses, counting only votes cast in primaries:

Obama 13,104,492
Clinton 13,243,919

Et voila! Clinton is actually ahead by over 100,000 "votes" right now.

So what does all this mean? It means that if the Clinton campaign presses ahead with the strategy it is clearly signaling, we can expect a political bloodbath at the end of the primary. The geniuses who make the rules for the Democratic primaries have come up with a system so complex and just plain weird that a number that should be as clear-as-day as "the popular vote" is anything but.

These are the facts of the matter. What is my opinion about all of this? First, that the people who designed this process should be sent to their rooms for the next 100 years and put to hard labor of sorting colored jelly beans into different piles. And second, that this process is so idiotic that the "popular vote" is a meaningless concept open to manipulation and spin, which is why what is supposed to counted are delegates. In spite of everything, there were rules that were spelled out to the candidates at the outset of the race by the Democratic Party. Two of those rules were these: (1) the nominee will be decided according to who wins the most delegates, (2) delegates from Michigan and Florida will not be included in the tally. The time to question those rules was before the primaries started, not now. Obama played by those rules. He did not participate in Florida or Michigan, and he made a strategy that focused on winning more delegates by giving significant attention to lots of small states, and states with caucuses where his grassroots activists would do well. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it was a smart plan which played by the rules. He didn't make those rules, he just played well by them. Most important of all, Obama did not pus to exclude Florida and Michigan, that was the Democratic National Committee. What he did do was say, OK, if the rules are that I am not supposed to campaign in those states and that their votes won't count, then I won't campaign there. The Clinton campaign's ploy to cast Obama as the mighty disenfranchiser of these states is disingenuous.

However, I also understand that my take on this will send some honest and sincere Clinton supporters into orbit, and Obama supporters need to understand that there is a rational basis for this. Just remind yourself how you felt in November 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. I'm going to guess you were righteous with rage. You might counter that in the presidential election the "popular vote" is not a number subject to manipulation and spin, making the comparison between the national election and the Democratic primary a false one. I agree. But somehow you are going to have to make room in your thinking for Clinton supporters who see it differently.

In all of this, just about the only thing that is dead certain is that if this plays out as it is shaping up to, the end game of the Democratic primary is going to be one ugly soap opera. The most likely scenario? Picture Obama winning the nomination from a convention that cannot even decide who has the right to attend, and ends with hundreds of angry Clinton delegates storming the exits and denouncing their party. Unless something changes very soon, I am thinking of spending August on my yearly trip to the Alaskan wilderness where the only folks I can talk to are wild animals who have never heard of American politics.

Addendum

Feedback I have been receiving indicates that some find it incredulous that Clinton would press ahead with the strategy I have outlined. To address this, I am including the remarks Clinton made at a fundraiser last night in Los Angeles:

"I thought it was Democrats who wanted to count every vote. If we had counted every vote in 2000 Al Gore would be finishing his second term."

"It was a level playing field in Florida, we were all on the ballot...In Michigan we all had the chance to be on the ballot, my opponent chose to take his off."

"We have to either count their votes or allow them to re-vote."

She went on to accuse Obama of thwarting a re-vote in Michigan:

"I don't know what Barack Obama was afraid of, he would have done very well in Michigan."

In his introductory remarks, Rob Reiner added:

"We're Democrats, we let everyone vote. If at the end of the process, there's a candidate who has more votes...When all the dust settles and Puerto Rico has voted, you're going to see that more people voted for Hillary Clinton."

My source on this is Todd Beeton's blog on Direct Democracy, here.

Comments

[Wigan]

It's nice to see Bit Jam, Ibrillante, Ursa Majority and others make the point about how the so-called popular vote totals disenfranchise the caucus states. No one in the mainstream media has yet made this point. Obama's margin of victory over Clinton in the caucus states was just under two hundred thousand. Given the difference in scale between primaries and caucuses, that margin of victory in caucuses is the equivalent of a margin of greater than one milllion votes in the primaries. If that extra eight hundred thousand were added to Obama's margin in the primary states, his total margin would be so huge that no one would be talking about Clinton's chances of overtaking him. I suspect that this why the mainstream media don't want to mention this issue. They want to see the race keep going, and if the popular vote is taken off the table it would be all over.

[Herrington]

Change the rules? Why stop at that when Clinton has a demonstrated penchant for trying to change reality. I don't see why her surrogates won't just cut to the chase and start declaring her the winner. Tut, tut, petty objections about delegates and votes do not change the fact that she is who won the nomination in February. To argue otherwise just shows your ignorance!

In fact, why bother with the election in November. Hillary is already the president if she says so. People who think otherwise just do not know what is good for them and therfore should have no say in the matter. Schedule the innuaguration for May 1, 2008 and lets get on with it people.

[mtuckey]

Well, it's working. Clinton supporters are really angry and feeling disenfranchized, and this is a result of Clinton's game playing and spin. Many have already jumped ship. Why do you think they are refusing to vote for Obama if he wins the primary. They believe she has rightfully won. Even more will jump ship before its over. Meanwhile, poor Howard Dean, as leader of the DNC, can't resolve any of this because Clinton has no respect for authority. She is going to make her own rules. Quite a spectacle.

[BitJam]

Using the popular vote instead of the pledged delegate count disenfranchises every state that held a caucus. Hillary complains about Michigan and Florida being disenfranchised even though they broke the rules and everyone there all knew their votes wouldn't count.

Now she turns around and tries to disenfranchise twelve states that obeyed the rules, including: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, Nevada, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, and Wyoming. Their only crime was that the vast majority of them chose Obama over Clinton.

The only fair way to combine the results of primaries with the results of caucuses is to use the pledged delegate count. That's what the Democrat party has been doing for years and that is the rule we decided to follow this year too. There is a simple word to describe an attempt to change to rules in your own favor in the middle of the game. That word is: "cheat".

[lbrillante]

Excuse me but I live in a caucus state...ca­ucuses are cheaper to run which is why our state has a caucus instead of a primary... If you do not have a fair way to figure us into the popular vote, then you will be disenfranchising every caucus state!!!
So if you are trying to compare apples and and oranges to make up a popular vote argument..­.. even if you seated Michigan and Florida and made them feel better it would be infuritating voters across the country who put in a lot of time and energy to participate in their caucuses!!! A primary requires less of a voter!!! A caucus voter has to pay a bigger investment of time, energy, participation, etc.

Changing the rules in the middle of the game is outrageous and tells me exactly what I can count on from the Clintons if they were back in the white house... ugly, ugly, ugly....

Florida and Michigan should be seated 50/50 period!! Take it or leave it!!

[ctom]

Let's just let Clinton steal, uh sorry, "win" this election and move on. She may destroy the party and McCain will have four years but what's another four more years of the same old stuff anyhow? We know exactly where we headed to with McCain and nothing is more uniting than to group together to vote against Hillary. Four years of further GOP rule is the price for Dems being unable to follow their own rules and not having any backbone whatsoever. Talk about silliness. First you punish them, and when they cry, you change the rules of punishment and actually reward them for crying so much. Talk about leadership. Dems don't have it.

I think Obama is a once in a generation figure but he still has a future. He's young. If he is as good as he thinks he is, then, he'll be back. Little jaded but back nonetheless.

[indie17]

It's really sad to see Rob Reiner as a part of this fiasco for Clinton. His movie 'The American President' is one of my favorites. Its noteworthy that in the movie, the right to burn the American flag is made issue of. Yet Clinton cosponsored a bill to criminalize flag-burning. Guess Rob has changed his tune on democracy. Or maybe he is a meatball after all.

[UrsaMajority]

What is this silliness about who's leading in "the popular vote"? That figure could not be more meaningless. Some states -- which, coincidentally enough largely went for Obama -- had only caucuses and so their voters' choices aren't reflected commensurately in the popular vote. For example, Washington has a larger population than Tennessee and has more delegates -- 97 vs. 85 -- and presumably thus should carry more weight in any mythical "popular vote" contest. And, Obama had three times the margin of victory (68-31 vs. 54-41) than Clinton had in Tennessee. But, because Washington chose to operate by caucus and Tennessee by primary, her 82,000 vote margin in such a "contest" carries seven times the weight of his 11,600 vote margin in Washington. This makes absolutely no sense, without even getting into the issue of counting the Florida and Michigan "votes".

The raw numbers:
Tennessee 85 total delegates
Clinton 332,599 = 54%
Obama 250,750 = 41%

Washington 97 total delegates
Obama 21,629 = 68%
Clinton 9,992 = 31%

[S1m0n]

That's a plan that *could* work, I suppose, but it's not a plan that *will* work. There is no sign that the superdelegates have any tremendous desire to bend the rules to make Hillary Queen. Period.

All of their counting and self-serving argument about superdelegates and the popular vote is going over like a lead ballon with the only audience that matters: the superdelegates.

[MaineMike]

Bob - I've looked at your "hard numbers" and they don't match up with the ones here:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html

Where are you getting these numbers from?

Using the "include all votes - don't leave anybody out" strategy, what about all the people who voted in Michigan for "uncommitted"? What about those people's vote? 40% of the voters went out of their way to vote against Clinton, what about them? Excluding the caucus states? How can exclusing even more states somehow be more democratic?

[MM5]

Oh, the latest Clinton tactic has become very clear...I hope the Obama campaign comes out in full media force on this one.

It was curious that several heavy Clinton supporters came out in the last 24 hours and claimed that if Clinton does not win the popular vote, she cannot be the nominee -Jack Murtha, Jon Corzine and Dee Dee Myers.

The stories are being presented as if this is some sort of about-face on the part of these people, that these people are having second thoughts about supporting Hillary or being generous towards Obama. And they were getting positive responses from even Obama supporters on the blogs.

UNTIL you realize that this is a trick - they are just trying to get the media to help them change the definition of what a "win" is for the nomination. They are trying to introduce the concept of the popular vote as a possible way to win the nomination. This even though according to party rules, it is only the delegate count that matters and whoever has the most delegates should win(as Nancy Pelosi has said).

I guarantee that we are going keep hearing the word "popular vote" over and over from camp Clinton because their mantra is that if you keep repeating a lie, people forget it is a lie.

Nice try...no dice

[MaineMike]

Unfortunately, people are going to have a hard time understanding the concept of "necessary, but not sufficient".

[Oldchef]

As Ursamajority points out, the "popular vote" count is totally misleading and we need to thank them for the post. Some caucus states have more delegates than some of the primary states. Total popular votes in those states are of course lower than in states with primaries. It's conceivable that their can be a delegate count on Obama's side way higher than Clinton's but with her getting close or ahead on the popular count just because the caucus states have fewer individuals voting for their delegates. the only fair count is the delegate count, but if Clinton comes anywhere close on the popular total, she'll scream unfair. Again, the FAIR count is the delegate count, period.

[PhoenixtheUndying]

Right now i can't tell who's more dangerous a clinton trying to win or a mccain trying to be a bush

[Politihal]

You have made an error in your reporting. Sen. Obama did, in fact, campaign in Fla. He made a media buy in a neighboring state that he knew would air in northern Florida. Even with the ad running, he lost the state to Senator Clinton.

[netgecko99]

And Hillary arranged for an awful lot of press coverage for her "fundraisers" in the state, and especially for her well-publicized "victory party." The fact remains that nobody campaigned in the state, much to Hillary's advantage as the candidate with overwhelming name recognition.

Of course, Hillary flip-flopped on Florida as soon as she saw that it might give her a political advantage. Say anything, do anything.

[SkipHarv]

Hill DID CAMPAIGN IN FLA!! She was in St. Pete 2 or 3 days before the Primary at of all places A BOWLING ALLEY!! It was in the papers down there in the Tampa/St. Pete area.

[KOBISKING]

Wow, we'd better seat those Delegates. Obama ran a commercial in a neighboring state to Florida. The Clinton machines are trying anything and everything to screw the voters.

[Bob Ostertag - Huffpost Blogger]

Running an ad in a neighboring state counts as campaigning in Florida? By that logic, Obama would have had to sit out Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi just to comply with the request of the DNC not to campaign in Florida! Sorry, but that is the most twisted logic have heard yet.

[efranklin]

Remember when Obama was down by 20 points in Texas? And then when he campaigned there, the lead trimmed to 3, and he won more delegates. Even with the "Clinton" name recognition, she has lost 30 contests.

[indie17]

From the Washington Post, January 30th:

Clinton announced plans for the Florida celebration on Sunday {January 27th, before the Floriday primary on Tuesday}, the same day she held a trio of fundraisers in Florida and accepted the endorsement of the Miami mayor while pressing some flesh for the cameras. On Monday, her campaign claimed the endorsement of Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, while pro-Clinton unions continued sending out mailings in her support.

All of this sounded suspiciously like campaigning. But aides said they were merely trying to protect the people of Florida who, despite the campaign's "scrupulous" refusal to campaign in the state, showed up to vote for Clinton anyway.

[NorVaGal]

Indie17; Thank you so much for this post. Some Clinton supporters keep throwing out this red herring that Obama campaigned in FL, because some of his ads were shown as part of a national blitz. Cable companies would not stop the ads in only one state. Even though these concerns were investigated and deemed as within compliance, some Clinton supporters REFUSE to accept this. However, they say not a word about HRC actually APPEARING in FL at these fundraisers, "celebration" , photo ops, endorsements and union mailings. Please keep sourcing this excerpt from WaPo and I will do the same.

[PragmaticProgressive]

I had a primary in my neighbor's yard with 100 people.
Obama won 100% in all demographics.
Can we count that in with the popular vote total?
It makes about as much sense as the scenarios that you are proposing.

[Violist]

It's so funny... I'm only 31 but I don't ever remember there being this much hub-bub about the Dem's nominee, especially when Bill Clinton ran and won twice. He didn't complain about caucuses not being democratic. It's only a problem because she's not winning, which is not presidential at all. I hope people use the power of their votes and vote Clinton out of the race.