What is the popular vote?

Right.  Superdelegates know better.  In their wisdom, they can see how the two candidates have slogged it out and then hand the nomination on the better stamina.  Who cares about the voters of New York and California and Texas and Illinois and Iowa and ... [you get the picture].  They didn't know, poor things.  Lets the supers - inlcuding the college Democrat dufooses who are on YouTube - select the candidate ...

Ach.

Say, does anyone know where I can buy some sex slaves?

I'm thinking Asia is the most likely source, or maybe Africa.  An out-of-the-way village, maybe, far from the prying eyes of CNN or pesky New Yorker reporters.

Now, I realize some of you may think that human beings are, say, created equal and thus it follows that we enjoy certain inalienable rights. And that if you follow this along its various logical threads you'll arrive at resulting conclusions, one being that a person owning another person is simply wrong.

[Another conclusion might be that, oh, let's see...to take one example: in a system created to celebrate and reinforce human equality, a system of governance would therefore give no person electoral power greater than that enjoyed by another. Hence every person who can vote on something that affects the entire society either votes directly on it or through a proxy to whom he or she DELEGATES the responsibility; the latter is logically and morally compelled to obey the will of those he or she represents, rather than any self-created sense of superiority...to avoid the antithesis, prevalent in elitist-run totalitarian societies, which Orwell succinctly described as "All animals are equal but SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."]

So, yeah--sorry for getting off the point there; I don't know what distracted me--let me know if you have a good source for sex slaves, because I'm in the market.

Yah... well why is it that Obama is beating Hillary soundly in the NJ polls while NJ voted for Clinton rather substantially in the primary held there on February 5th?  And why bother to hold primaries at all?  Let's just take a poll say in June and go with whatever that shows.

As you characters here pontificate, Joe Andrews, a super delegate and former chair of the DNC, appointed by Clinton in 1991, just switched his commitment from Hillary to Obama, on the grounds that Obama is the more principles candidate and calling on all other supers to switch and vote for the obviously more honorable candidate.

So spin away... fantasize away...carry water for the Hillary strategy... it is all such drivel.  

Dear Zvika --

 Nice to meet you.  

  I assume by "the full extent of Wrightgate or the myriad other controversies that have dogged Obama since the early days of his campaign," you really mean "the picayune and embarrassing distractions from any actual indication of how Obama would perform in the job."  And perhaps Obama is wearied and disheartened that the opponent who has evinced such viciousness is from his OWN PARTY and is married to the man who is still the most prominent member of said party.

  Yes, superdelegates have the benefit of time.  Bully for them.  Do they have a moral obligation to uphold the votes of their constituents?  No, I suppose not.  (Our own barely-tolerated governor has already stated he plans to support Clinton despite the result of the Maine caucus.)  But they can't possibly expect anything less than genuine anger from the people if the popular will is overturned, particularly when the damage to the preferred candidate has come from within the party.

williamyard, icarusr --

Given your enthusiasm for inalienable rights and democracy, i assume you're only counting the actual popular votes?  After all, pledged delegates are selected by elaborate rules, including caucus states (where, for example, working moms in Texas who don't have childcare so can't attend the late-night caucuses count "less" than college students who have the time to attend both), and Florida (where a GOP decision to move the primary date cost some or perhaps all of the delegates)?  

Also, I assume you both want to make sure that the primary nomination battle goes on through June, so that the votes of people in Guam and Puerto Rico can be counted?  

Given the vigor of your rhetoric in defense of the equal rights of all voters, I certainly hope you're not going to reverse your pro-democracy view when it hurts the candidate you seem to favor.  

VC: Amen.  Between open and closed primaries, and caucuses, and double voting in places like Texas (officially, and unofficially in Arkansas and Mississippi), what does "popular vote" mean?

DrDanny: do you think people understand the word "myriad" any more?  Or "controversy" for that matter?  "Full extent", perhaps?  "Issue"?  "Elections"?  "War"?  "A tanking dollar and sinking economy"?

WilliamYard: Two Legs Good; Four Legs Bad.

Zvika: Please don't become another Kirchik.

CNN reported the following on January 3, 2008:

-- Clinton of New York leads the delegate race as of Thursday, with support from 154 superdelegates, more than three times the number supporting her nearest rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

www.cnn.com/.../index.html

That report appeared on the day of the Iowa caucus before a single vote had been counted. I would have a lot more faith in the notion that superdelegates need to follow one strategy over another if Senator Clinton did not change the strategy to suit whatever her current political needs are.

These 154 delegates came out for Clinton before Obama won the Iowa Caucus, they came out for Clinton before Super Tuesday, they came out for Clinton before Obama's run of election victories in February, they came out for Clinton before it became almost mathematically impossible for her to win the nomination on pledged delegates.

Clinton and Obama both joined this race knowing the rules.  It is pretty clear that Clinton was sufficiently arrogant that she assumed the race would be over on Super Tuesday and that she failed to plan a race in which that would not be true. Now she finds it convenient to change the way we think about the race - it is a shame she had not thought of that before singing up 154 superdelegates before a single vote had been counted. If these delegates got to make a fresh choice today, without the possibility of being described as traitors by the Clinton camp, I suspect many of them would look at what has happened over the last few months and come to a different decision.

DMehlhorn, we're on the same page.

If it were up to me, I'd jettison the causus system, which unfairly burdens people with physical and other limitations, hold all state primaries on Saturday to facilitate working-class voter participation, and, yes, ensure that all votes are counted--each and every one, Puerto Rico, Guam, whatever.

I'm an Obama supporter but that doesn't mean I don't value democracy over Obama. Hell, I'll take democracy over Abraham Lincoln.

What's the point of even holding these primaries then?

Might as well just make a big smokey tent to begin with and make the decision there.

Should Superdelegates Respect the Popular Vote?

Depends. Do they want to win?

All the bright arguments about their original intention--suddenly we're all literalists--the precedent to give the nomination to the winner of the most delegates is pretty much ingrained. Oh! the fun Republicans would have with that sort of hypocrisy if the know-it-alls gave it to Billary, and justifiably so.

DMehlhorn: Please see my response to VC.

1. To argue that the supers should not presume to second guess the results of the primaries, caucuses and so on, is not to question the process as we have it.  The process as we have it elects delegates - pledged delegates - on the basis of arcane and somewhat arbitrary rules, who are then responsible for the selection of the nominee.  Under the rules as they are, what "counts" really is the pledged delegates and not so much the popular vote - for precisely the reasons you have pointed out.

2. The "Let Guam have it say" argument goes only so far.  In many Presidential elections, the results are known even before California votes.  THAT the results are known does not negate Californians' right to vote; but for the same token, one does not say that the earlier votes are invalid because California hasn't voted yet.  Some forty states have already had their primaries; the results are more or less a foregone conclusion; continued campaigning will not change the end-game, but only weaken the Democratic Party.

3. There is a contradiction at the heart of Mrs. Clinton's machinations: on the one hand, she harps on the "popular vote", on the other hand, she insists that pledged delegates are free agents.  She cannot have it both ways: either the popular vote, however arrived at, means something - in which case the pledged delegates are bound to follow it; or the delegates are free agents, which means that the popular vote does not mean anything.  Solve that riddle how you will (one or the other), and you have handed the nomination to Obama.

The superdelegates no doubt can vote against the popular vote, but being that most of them are politicians, why will they?

Most of the remaining uncommitted SD's are elected officials.  To think that these folks will overturn the will of their constituents is rediculous.  Here in Colorado, we have a former governer, DNC chair and some elected officials.  We're waiting for the Salazar brothers, our Governer and Congressman Udall to commit.  We voted 67-32 for Obama.  Will the supers cross that sort of landslide? Best of luck to them if they try.

Remember that when we look to news outlets we see the superdelegates mixed in with each state's total delegate count.  Colorado lists 55, including 15 SD's, California 370 with 70 SD's etc.  We're primed to think of SD's as being tied to a particular state, and therefore answerable to the electorate in that state.  They think of themselves as indipendent national figures, but I think voters consider them (and this really does matter, no matter what the rules say) bound to the will of the voters.

There. Is. No. National. Polular. Vote.

The states voted on different days, with different procedures, and different lists of candidates on the ballot.  It's a bushel barrel full of oranges, bananas, pears, kumquats, avocados, lemons, tomatoes, strawberries, limes, kiwis, apricots, peaches, and plums, and the "popular vote" spinmeisters call the whole thing "apples."

Besides, why do the "popular vote" advocates want to nullify the votes of people who voted in early contests for candidates other than Hillary and Obama? Plenty of people voted for Edwards and Biden and, well, OK, plenty of people voted for Edwards. Surely these voters not only have a preference between Hillary and Obama but deserve to have their preference between Hillary and Obama counted. The "popular vote" fantasists say to the Edwards voters, "Screw you and your throw-away vote, you don't count."

"They know so much more than the voters they would be upholding."

Yuck. That's all there is to say. Just yuck.

TNR has really evolved over the last few months. Or should I say "devolved"? Post after post about how little democracy matters.

This I take it is born from the same brilliant analysis that led to endorsing the Iraq war and Joe Lieberman for president in 2004.

What happens in that TNR office? Are you guys so anxious to write something counterintuitive that you'll write anything as long as it contradicts common sense?

Reminder to TNR: the majority of a single vote is as sacred as a unanimous vote.

When some of the caucus states didn't even hold vote totals, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED PLEDGED DELEGATES WAS THE MEASURING STICK..

Riddle me this...

are you just going to leave OUT those states ?

Isn't this just another ' changing of the rules in the middle of the game'?

eudoxie: yes.

If you wanted your vote to count, you should have voted for Hillary. And you should have made sure to cast your vote in a state that voted for Hillary using procedures that Hillary particularly approves ad being favorable to her. If you made the mistake of voting against Hillary, or living in a state that didn't back her or that doesn't follow Hillary's preferred methods of eligibility and delegate-allocation, then the "popular vote" police have a simple message for you: "Screw you; we don't need to count your stinking vote."

"myriad other controversies" ??

What *exactly* are these myriad other controversies?

"Bittergate"? "Bowling-gate"? "Cling-gate" (see "Bittergate" above)  "Arugula-gate"? (HRC just had "Latte-gate"...)

On what SUBSTANTIVE issue did Obama (and NOT his ex-paster) falter over these last four months?

This is what the process has come down to so far: An interminable two-year campaign that does nothing more than enrich the media and certain advertising agencies. Staggered primaries that enable the few in small states to dictate the choices of the many in the large ones. Crossover voting. Walk-in caucuses. Phony debates aimed at making the moderators look good. Gotcha games. And this is the democracy we are evangelizing to the rest of the world? Good grief, Charlie Brown!

nbarry, to quote the brilliant pundit Kent Brockman --  "I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  Democracy just doesn't work."

Throw out Camp Hillary's ever-shifting opinions about "which states matter," and her desperate attempts to cobble together a popular vote total from a contest which has no popular vote, and you're left with one argument. "Our nominee should be the candidate with the best approval polls at the end of primary season."

What's wrong with that system? Everything. Simply everything. I can't bother to explain all the myriad ways in which throwing out the results of several months' worth of contests, and holding a popularity contest among unelected delegates at the last moment, is so fundamentally and spectacularly wrong. Suffice it to say that if the tables were turned, Hillary would be painting Obama as nothing less than a black radical out to steal the White House.

And it would be a spectacularly radical action to steal the party's nomination from the party's voters. Not just radical, but Dubya radical. Crazy true-believer radical. Does it start to make sense why Hillary has been playing Dubya's part? Valuing loyalty above all else? Bragging about how every violation of the standards of decency is some kind of courage? Believe it: Hillary has gone into the Bush Bubble.

Doesn't anyone remember how much the media loved and fawned over Obama when he was the appointed loser in Mrs. Clinton's coronation drama? Doesn't anyone remember how Hillary was loathed, reviled and humiliated by the same media over the past sixteen years? Doesn't anyone understand that the moment she wins the race, the false love affair is over, and she's the devil again?

Yet we're still arguing over whether we should choose the winner through an undemocratic last-minute popularity contest!

Damn the polls -- this is not American Idol. Nor, at this point, is it a real election. Obama won. Hillary has no real chance of stealing the nomination, much less the White House. The real problem is that we're still discussing this non-probability. This is a race between Obama and McCain. Hillary is no longer a candidate. She's just a spoiler.

Frankly, Hillary should take the podium with Reverend Wright. Their motivations, resentments, and retributive goals are pretty much the same; neither is going to be President anytime soon, but both are professionally enriched and emotionally satisfied if Obama loses in the fall.

Third-party ticket, anyone? Hillary/Wright '08? It would definitely draw an UNUSUAL cross-section of the American public....

I'd like to buy an ad for placement right below the TNR blog header. The ad will read:

"No debate about the FL/MI situation or using the popular vote decide the nominee will be permitted."

desperjm,

Wait until it comes out that the Clintons gave their big donors keys to the White House grounds...

"Gate-gate!"

[rimshot!]

[wild applause!]

Thank you, thankyouverymuch...try the veal...

Frankly, Zvika, your point is inane.  There is no other word for it.

First of all, this is not a moral issue or even one of obligation.  The super-delegates have no moral or other obligation to vote for anyone.  By posing the question in those terms, you give the obvious answer, which is No, and then think your answer makes sense.  What actually happened is you asked a stupid, irrelevant question and then gave yourself a stupid answer.

The Democratic party is a political party, Zvika.  Why does it hold primaries?  The process is long, grueling, and uses up tremendous resources, hundreds of millions of dollars, that might be used to battle against the Republicans.  It could use a variety of far cheaper means, involving party leaders, to make the choice.  Answer:  Because in a democratic society, the vote of the people, even mediated through representatives of delegates, confers the highest form of political legitimacy.  The party wants to know that the rank and file will be committed to the candidate.  Since there are multiple contenders and many of them are going to lose, the way in which it reconciles everyone to the outcome is via a democratic election contest.  

There is a second reason which is that the primaries provide a useful means of giving the candidates experience in campaigning.  It gives the party voters a chance to look at the candidates campaigning over an extended time.  That's a good part of the reason why the primary is not held as a single election on one day which in many respects would be far simpler.  The process is deliberately extended to give the voters a chance for an extended view.

So, Zvika, the proper question is not moral, it is purely political.  After engaging in this long, expensive process the purpose of which is to confer democratic legitimacy on the outcome and also to choose the candidate who demonstrates skill and efficacy at campaigning, you don't just say to party members who have come out to vote in numbers that will exceed more than 33 million, and dedicated party activists who have worked on the campaign, "Thanks for the advice.  Now we will make the decision."  That strips the outcome of the very legitimacy that the party has just spent something like half a billion dollars to create.

In other words, Zvika, if the party did such a thing without a very compelling reason, one that the rank and file found very compelling, IT WOULD BE STUPID!!!!! like your question.  It would be much, much worse than if the party had not held primaries in the first place because the leadership would be telling the rank and file, screw you.  Now, in this case the leadership may have the formal, legal power to do that.  But the voters always get the last laugh.  If the leadership did such a thing in the absence of a compelling reason broadly accepted by the party membership as such, it would destroy not only its election hopes for the presidency, but its chances in hundreds of down ticket races as well.  Because when you tell the voters to go screw themselves, they throw you out of office, or they just stay home and accomplish the same result.  You see, Zvika, the entire undertaking is about politics and the expression of the public will.

So, the first question to ask is whether there are circumstances where the super delegates ought to overrule the results of the designated delegate selection process.  Disagreeing with the choice arrived at by that process is clearly not one of them no matter what handwaving arguments you make about which states, votes, etc. ought to be given more weight.  Americans do not think in those terms.  A proportional system of delegate awards, with curlicues to be sure, was adopted and that is what the voters expect will determine the outcome, and they will not be denied.  

A second possibility is that the popular vote, assuming that such a thing could be determined, comes out in a different direction than than the delegate selection process.  Since the supers have delegate votes by definition, they could decide that they think that, in a case that is quite a bit closer than the number of super-delegate votes,  the popular will is better expressed by the popular vote than by the delegate outcome.  But that too had better seem very compelling as the rules of the game have been that the voters are selecting delegates, not entering into a direct election.  Had it been a direct election, it is entirely reasonable to expect that the campaigns would have been conducted quite differently and the outcome of the vote would have to be quite different.  So, not only would the loser of the delegate race have to win the overall popular vote (including all the caucuses but definitely excluding illegitimate outcomes such as MI and FL that were officially NOT elections when they were held), but it would have to be convincing, either because it is by a significant margin (surely no less than the percentage difference in the pledged delegate count which will be around 0.5% -- that translates into more than a 150,000 votes) or because the final races are a sweep and blowout that indicates the collapse of one candidate's support.

The third possibility would be a collapse of a candidate in the public opinion polls for some clear reason.  If that happened during the primary season, it would have to be reflected in the remaining outcomes.  If it happens after the end of the primaries and before the convention, then it would still have to be cllear and compelling -- meaning some sort of scandal of major proportions sufficient to collapse the poll standings.

Anything else, Zvika, is political suicide for the Democratic party.  People are accustomed to accepting a  loss by their candidate in the voting, reconciling themselves to the party's nominee, and moving on into the general PRECISELY because elections confer democratic legitimacy.  Americans, by long tradition, accept the outcome of democratic elections.  But if you strip the process of that legitimacy just because a handful of self-appointed party leaders decide they disagree with the voters, the party would be doomed.

So, if you were asking an intelligent question, you might have asked, "Do the super-delegates have any reason to destroy the Democratic party by over-ruling the popular will?"  The obvious answer, even more obvious than the answer to your stupid question, is "No."

P.S.  The notion that the voters have not expressed their will because an election is close -- what Hillaristas call a "statistical tie" is not going to fly.  Americans accept that elections are sometimes decided by a single vote.  They do not accept that the person who got fewer votes wins because of the intervention of the powerful.  That idea -- including the "statistical tie" meme -- is purely a Republican invention to justify the theft of the 2000 presidential election.  Elections are decided by votes, not by statistics.

"Should superdelegates respect the popular vote?"

The answer, of course, depends on what you mean by "should."  

Does anything in the Democratic Party rules obligate the supers to respect the popular vote?  Obviously not.

Are the supers under any MORAL obligation to honor the popular election result--however you might define it?  Again, obviously not.

Are the supers under any PRACTICAL obligation to vote according to the popular will?  It is certainly debatable--see Noam Scheiber's recent posts and the response--but the answer is likely "yes."  

I don't think very many people are making either of the first two claims, and to argue against them is to go after a straw man.

The problem is that nobody knows who's electable. It's all just second guessing - "OMG! Angry Black Man! Not Obama, but the guy Obama just denounced completely but not soon enough! The racists will NEVER vote for him now! And everyone's a racist but me!" It's all got the flavor of a stupid panic stampede, which is no way to make a decision.

I now see that after roid's, my post was completely redundant.  Apologies. It's what you get for not reading other poster's comments before you mouth off.

To quote Butch Cassidy " Rules? In a knife fight!"  

ndmackenzie is right on.  Everyone knew the rules for winning the Democratic Party nomination.  #1 get 2025 delagates of all stripes.  #2, FL and MI would have no delages awarded.  #3, some states will use caucuses (#3a TX will have a primary and a caucus).  #4 there will be no winner take all, and different states will award delagates differently, some at large, some by congressional district, etc.

Popular vote totals don't matter, big states don't count more than smaller states, primary states don't count more than caucus states, states with more electoral college votes don't count more than states with fewer electoral college votes.  You just need 2025 delagates.

Barack Obama said "Okay campaign staff those are the rules.  Find a way for us to win the nomination following these rules".

Hillary Clinton said "Campaign staff this is stupid, tell everyone I'm envitable, I'm the best candidate to take on the Republican attack machine, I've been throught it before.  We'll wrap it up by Super Tuesday and if we don't, we'll just say the rules don't matter and I should be the nominee, because I won more votes, bigger states, primary states, states with more electoral college votes"

Seems pretty clear that the superdelates should repect the rules, and the candidate who followed the rules to find a way to win, not the candidate who assumed she would win and couldn't be bothered with the rules.

The Times reports today that the Clinton campaign is finally admitting the obvious:  Not only will they lose the delegate race, but they will lose the popular vote as well.  The spin now is that they "will be close."  And of course, the balance of that spin is that, if it is close, they should still win by losing.

Happily, the Times also reports that the super-delegates are not buying the Hillarista Kool-aid.  The broad consensus amongst the (publicly) uncommitted super-delegates is that the winner is supposed to win, not the loser.

When the party is closely divided, I don't think the supers have much option other than to respect the votes of the people - barring some disaster.  While Obama has wilted under constant attacks of Clinton, McCain and the media, Clinton has essentially been given a free ride on her own unpleasant associations.  As a result, this primary has not produced much information about how we might expect the electorate to respond to such attacks.  Perhaps they wouldn't budge the needle much, but then again, think back to the 90s, when people were willing to openly accuse her of murder.  As a result, it's my belief that the supers simply cannot accurate predict which candidate will be more electable come November.

We look into the issues and pressures that they are mulling over this week.

Hey, Daily Intelligencer,

Is that an advertisement that you are posting here?  Did you pay for your TNR subscription or is this some sort of publishers' courtesy?