- Joined
- Nov 19, 2004
- Posts
- 5,842
- Media
- 0
- Likes
- 2,609
- Points
- 333
- Location
- Memphis (Tennessee, United States)
- Gender
- Male
These two articles were a part of the news websites of the Yahoo News. I copied these and have pasted them as is. At the end there is the web site address where you can access the original articles.
For debates sake, the purpose of this thread is not to debate whether the conclusions that the writers have come to. We will pretend for debates sake that the articles are in fact a correct assessment. The purpose of this debate here is this: If you are a super delegate to the Democratic Convention and your FIRST priority is to win the White House for the Democrats do you:
1. Go with Obama. He has a very slim majority of the popular vote and is leading in the delegate count.
OR
2. Go with Hillary. If the delegates were awarded according to a "winner take all" system, Hillary would be in the lead in delegats according to this article.
Also consider what the second article concludes.
In the match up with McCain against:
Obama. McCain has a slight lead in electoral votes.
Hillary. Hillary has a lead in electoral votes.
Keep in mind that while Gore had over a 200,000 lead in popular vote over Bush, Bush barely won the electoral college vote count in 2000.
To our members outside of the US, the President, the United States does not elect its President by popular vote. This is the way the vote is tabulated. Example:
Arkansas - six electoral votes. McCain wins Arkansas by one vote, he gets all six electoral votes. McCain wins the popular vote in Arkansas by a very large majority. McCain still just has six electoral votes.
So it is entirely possible for candidate A to barely win enough states to win a majority of electoral votes but get beat badly in all the other states causing candidate B to win the popular vote handily and still lose the electoral college vote.
There are pros and cons of the Electoral College. I hope that we will leave that debate out of this discussion. That would best be discussed in a different thread. No matter whether you like the Electoral College or not, we are stuck with it this year for sure.
Now here is the copy and past version of the first article. The second article is in the first post. (Too long for one post.)
Why Hillary Clinton should be winning
Under a winner-take-all primary system, Hillary Clinton would have a wide lead over Barack Obama -- and enough delegates to clinch the nomination by June.
By Sean Wilentz
Reuters/Matt Sullivan
April 7, 2008 | The continuing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about democracy. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its candidate stands for a transformative, participatory new politics. It has vaunted Obama's narrow lead in the overall popular vote in the primaries to date, as well as in the count of elected delegates, as the definitive will of the party's rank and file. If, while heeding the party's rules, the Democratic superdelegates overturn those majorities, Obama's supporters claim, they will have displayed a cynical contempt for democracy that would tear the party apart.
These arguments might be compelling if Obama's leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process, as well as on some blatantly anti-democratic maneuvers by the Obama campaign. Obama's advantage hinges on a system that, whatever the actual intentions behind it, seems custom-made to hobble Democratic chances in the fall. It depends on ignoring one of the central principles of American electoral politics, one that will be operative on a state-by-state basis this November, which is that the winner takes all. If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have a commanding lead in the delegate count, one that will only grow more commanding after the next round of primaries, and all questions about which of the two Democratic contenders is more electable would be moot.
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. If she splits the 10 remaining contests with Obama, as seems plausible, with Clinton taking Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Puerto Rico, and Obama winning North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Guam, she'd pick up another 364 pledged delegates. She'd have 2,107 before a single superdelegate was wooed. You'd need 2,208 to be the Democratic nominee. That would leave her barely a hundred votes shy, and well ahead of Obama. It is almost inconceivable that she would fail to gain the required number of superdelegates easily. No more blogospheric ranting about Clinton "stealing" the nomination by kidnapping superdelegates or cutting deals at a brokered convention.
But Clinton does not now have 1,743 delegates. According to CNN estimates, Clinton has about 1,242 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,413. Most of that total is based on the peculiar way that delegates are apportioned in 2008. Some of it is because Obama's backers are using the same kind of tactics as George Bush's camp used in Florida in 2000.
Crucially, Team Obama doesn't want to count the votes of Michigan and Florida. (And let's note that in a winner-take-all system, Clinton would still be leading in delegates, 1,430 to 1,257, even without Michigan and Florida.) Under the existing system, Obama's current lead in the popular vote would nearly vanish if the results from Michigan and Florida were included in the total, and his lead in pledged delegates would melt almost to nothing. The difference in the popular vote would fall to 94,005 out of nearly 27 million cast thus far -- a difference of a mere four-tenths of 1 percentage point -- and the difference in delegates would plummet to about 30, out of the 2,208 needed to win. Add those states' votes to the totals, and take a sober look at Clinton's popular-vote victories in virtually all other large states, and the electoral dynamic changes. She begins to look like the almost certain nominee.
The exclusion thus far of these two vital states has come about because of an arbitrary and catastrophic decision made last year by Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee. Two democratic options are available to clean up the mess: Either relent by including the existing Michigan and Florida results or hold new primaries there.
Yet in this, as has happened more than once this primary season, the Obama camp's reaction has not been to clean up the mess the party has created, but to benefit from it. Given the original primary outcomes in Michigan and Florida, Obama has rejected the idea of certifying the results. Although Obama's supporters conducted a stealth "uncommitted" campaign in Michigan after he voluntarily removed his name from the state ballot, and even though, contrary to DNC directives, his campaign advertised in Florida, Clinton still won both states decisively. This leaves open the option of holding new primaries in both states. National and state party officials have announced that such revotes could be conducted.
Yet the Obama campaign has stoutly resisted any such revote in either state. In Michigan, Obama's supporters thwarted efforts to pass the legislation necessary to conduct a new primary. In Florida, campaign lawyers threw monkey wrenches to stop the process cold, claiming that a revote would somehow violate the Voting Rights Act, and charging that a proposed mail-in revote would not be "fraud proof." (Obama himself, it's important to note, proposed a bill in 2007 to allow for mail-in voting in federal elections.)
Instead, Obama's campaign has tendered the startling proposal that he arbitrarily be allotted half of the votes already cast in Michigan and Florida. Of course, a large number of these votes -- more than a quarter of a million in Florida alone -- were not cast for Obama. He simply proposes that the party add these votes to his total, as though they were rightfully his. Saying that votes already cast for other candidates should go to him is a bold power grab, worthy of the Chicago machine organizations that claimed the votes of the recently deceased, their names gleaned from the voting rolls. By any definition of democracy, those votes do not belong to Obama; nor do they belong to Hillary Clinton, nor to Howard Dean. They belong to the voters. Obama can no more lay claim to them legitimately than his supporters can declare he has won the nomination before the remaining primaries take place.
Next page: Clinton would defeat McCain in the Electoral College because of her lead in big, electoral-vote-rich states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- and McCain would beat Obama
The case for Hillary Clinton's electability | Salon
For debates sake, the purpose of this thread is not to debate whether the conclusions that the writers have come to. We will pretend for debates sake that the articles are in fact a correct assessment. The purpose of this debate here is this: If you are a super delegate to the Democratic Convention and your FIRST priority is to win the White House for the Democrats do you:
1. Go with Obama. He has a very slim majority of the popular vote and is leading in the delegate count.
OR
2. Go with Hillary. If the delegates were awarded according to a "winner take all" system, Hillary would be in the lead in delegats according to this article.
Also consider what the second article concludes.
In the match up with McCain against:
Obama. McCain has a slight lead in electoral votes.
Hillary. Hillary has a lead in electoral votes.
Keep in mind that while Gore had over a 200,000 lead in popular vote over Bush, Bush barely won the electoral college vote count in 2000.
To our members outside of the US, the President, the United States does not elect its President by popular vote. This is the way the vote is tabulated. Example:
Arkansas - six electoral votes. McCain wins Arkansas by one vote, he gets all six electoral votes. McCain wins the popular vote in Arkansas by a very large majority. McCain still just has six electoral votes.
So it is entirely possible for candidate A to barely win enough states to win a majority of electoral votes but get beat badly in all the other states causing candidate B to win the popular vote handily and still lose the electoral college vote.
There are pros and cons of the Electoral College. I hope that we will leave that debate out of this discussion. That would best be discussed in a different thread. No matter whether you like the Electoral College or not, we are stuck with it this year for sure.
Now here is the copy and past version of the first article. The second article is in the first post. (Too long for one post.)
Why Hillary Clinton should be winning
Under a winner-take-all primary system, Hillary Clinton would have a wide lead over Barack Obama -- and enough delegates to clinch the nomination by June.
By Sean Wilentz
Reuters/Matt Sullivan
April 7, 2008 | The continuing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about democracy. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its candidate stands for a transformative, participatory new politics. It has vaunted Obama's narrow lead in the overall popular vote in the primaries to date, as well as in the count of elected delegates, as the definitive will of the party's rank and file. If, while heeding the party's rules, the Democratic superdelegates overturn those majorities, Obama's supporters claim, they will have displayed a cynical contempt for democracy that would tear the party apart.
These arguments might be compelling if Obama's leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current Democratic nominating process, as well as on some blatantly anti-democratic maneuvers by the Obama campaign. Obama's advantage hinges on a system that, whatever the actual intentions behind it, seems custom-made to hobble Democratic chances in the fall. It depends on ignoring one of the central principles of American electoral politics, one that will be operative on a state-by-state basis this November, which is that the winner takes all. If the Democrats ran their nominating process the way we run our general elections, Sen. Hillary Clinton would have a commanding lead in the delegate count, one that will only grow more commanding after the next round of primaries, and all questions about which of the two Democratic contenders is more electable would be moot.
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. If she splits the 10 remaining contests with Obama, as seems plausible, with Clinton taking Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Puerto Rico, and Obama winning North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Guam, she'd pick up another 364 pledged delegates. She'd have 2,107 before a single superdelegate was wooed. You'd need 2,208 to be the Democratic nominee. That would leave her barely a hundred votes shy, and well ahead of Obama. It is almost inconceivable that she would fail to gain the required number of superdelegates easily. No more blogospheric ranting about Clinton "stealing" the nomination by kidnapping superdelegates or cutting deals at a brokered convention.
But Clinton does not now have 1,743 delegates. According to CNN estimates, Clinton has about 1,242 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,413. Most of that total is based on the peculiar way that delegates are apportioned in 2008. Some of it is because Obama's backers are using the same kind of tactics as George Bush's camp used in Florida in 2000.
Crucially, Team Obama doesn't want to count the votes of Michigan and Florida. (And let's note that in a winner-take-all system, Clinton would still be leading in delegates, 1,430 to 1,257, even without Michigan and Florida.) Under the existing system, Obama's current lead in the popular vote would nearly vanish if the results from Michigan and Florida were included in the total, and his lead in pledged delegates would melt almost to nothing. The difference in the popular vote would fall to 94,005 out of nearly 27 million cast thus far -- a difference of a mere four-tenths of 1 percentage point -- and the difference in delegates would plummet to about 30, out of the 2,208 needed to win. Add those states' votes to the totals, and take a sober look at Clinton's popular-vote victories in virtually all other large states, and the electoral dynamic changes. She begins to look like the almost certain nominee.
The exclusion thus far of these two vital states has come about because of an arbitrary and catastrophic decision made last year by Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee. Two democratic options are available to clean up the mess: Either relent by including the existing Michigan and Florida results or hold new primaries there.
Yet in this, as has happened more than once this primary season, the Obama camp's reaction has not been to clean up the mess the party has created, but to benefit from it. Given the original primary outcomes in Michigan and Florida, Obama has rejected the idea of certifying the results. Although Obama's supporters conducted a stealth "uncommitted" campaign in Michigan after he voluntarily removed his name from the state ballot, and even though, contrary to DNC directives, his campaign advertised in Florida, Clinton still won both states decisively. This leaves open the option of holding new primaries in both states. National and state party officials have announced that such revotes could be conducted.
Yet the Obama campaign has stoutly resisted any such revote in either state. In Michigan, Obama's supporters thwarted efforts to pass the legislation necessary to conduct a new primary. In Florida, campaign lawyers threw monkey wrenches to stop the process cold, claiming that a revote would somehow violate the Voting Rights Act, and charging that a proposed mail-in revote would not be "fraud proof." (Obama himself, it's important to note, proposed a bill in 2007 to allow for mail-in voting in federal elections.)
Instead, Obama's campaign has tendered the startling proposal that he arbitrarily be allotted half of the votes already cast in Michigan and Florida. Of course, a large number of these votes -- more than a quarter of a million in Florida alone -- were not cast for Obama. He simply proposes that the party add these votes to his total, as though they were rightfully his. Saying that votes already cast for other candidates should go to him is a bold power grab, worthy of the Chicago machine organizations that claimed the votes of the recently deceased, their names gleaned from the voting rolls. By any definition of democracy, those votes do not belong to Obama; nor do they belong to Hillary Clinton, nor to Howard Dean. They belong to the voters. Obama can no more lay claim to them legitimately than his supporters can declare he has won the nomination before the remaining primaries take place.
Next page: Clinton would defeat McCain in the Electoral College because of her lead in big, electoral-vote-rich states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- and McCain would beat Obama
The case for Hillary Clinton's electability | Salon