Sean Wilentz: Why Hillary should be winning.
Clinton's supporters are striking me recently as a rather deranged bunch of people who will do anything rather than face the reality that she has lost the nomination, but the best I've read by a long chalk, is this diatribe from Sean Wilentz.
Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats in primary states choose their nominee on the basis of a convoluted system of proportional distribution of delegates that varies from state to state and that obtains in neither congressional nor presidential elections. It is this eccentric system that has given Obama his lead in the delegate count. If the Democrats heeded the "winner takes all" democracy that prevails in American politics, and that determines the president, Clinton would be comfortably in front. In a popular-vote winner-take-all system, Clinton would now have 1,743 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,257.Isn't that fantastic? I have always admitted that I have never understood the Clinton camps tactics, as they seemed to me to be fighting a battle for the democratic nomination as if it was a fight for the presidency itself. They seemed to concentrate on big states and totally ignore the fact that this race is decided by the number of delegates, so those little states matter a lot, whether or not they'll vote Democrat come November.
Wilentz is now arguing that, if the voting in the race for the democratic nomination was not proportional, but rather winner takes all as in the race for the presidency, then Hillary would be in the lead.
Yes, but the whole point is that the voting was proportional and everyone knew that when the race began.
He's now arguing that Clinton would be in the lead if we counted the votes differently. Yeah, and I could be very wealthy if grass was money.
I thought I'd heard every dumb Clinton argument, but this guy deserves a medal.
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2 comments:
I've seen this arguement before from pro-Clinton bloggers. I'd also be willing to bet that if you searched their sites you'd find a complaint about Dubya having won the electoral count but not the popular vote. I personally think winner-take-all is rather undemocratic, though I dont know if anyone has taken it to the extremes that the Bush Administration did.
As for Clinton atcing like "fighting a battle for the democratic nomination as if it was a fight for the presidency itself", well, this race has been described as one which was the Democrat's to lose.
Dave,
It's simply too insane an argument for words. Either they didn't understand the rules and lost. Or they did understand the rules and lost. Either way, they lost. Or is it that having argued that Florida and Michigan shouldn't count and now arguing that they should, maybe it's only fair to Hillary that we should not "disenfranchise" people and we can have a recount using the first past the post system. What matters obviously is that "Hillary MUST win!" And if you don't agree you must be a misogynist pig.
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