This is a response to a diary from earlier today. The frustration is that Obama surrogates do not push back against Hillary's popular vote argument.
I have written several diaries trying to calculate the popular vote and I wrote this last one, to write my conclusion that Hillary will probably NOT get the popular vote out of Puerto Rico. She won't net the 120,000+ votes that I calculated she would need to win when you include both Florida AND Michigan, while also allocating part of Uncommitted to Obama.
The thing is, Hillary had the chance to win using that metric if she netted enough from Puerto Rico.
In that situation, the WORST case scenario would be for them to have spent 6 weeks saying "Nope! If you include Michigan's Uncommitted Obama's still ahead!!!!!!!!!" This would have created a threshold that Hillary would have crossed to "gain" the popular vote. Her case would be FAR stronger.
So, if Obama surrogates debated the popular vote on the basis of, "Well when you include the caucuses and X percent of Uncommitted etc" WHEN Hillary crossed it, she could claim "Well, look. I have now passed THEIR definition of the popular vote."
Engaging in vigorous pushback of the popular would not only highlight its profile even more, it would legitimize it as a metric and OBAMA would be the one who chose the terms of that metric. When Hillary crossed it she would frame it precisely in that way.
How do you defuse this problem? After all counting Michigan and Florida is absurd because they were not legitimate contests, and don't reflect the will of the voters. Well, first by delegitimizing the popular vote and making this a race for delegates as much as possible, which the Obama campaign ALWAYS does. But also by not arguing Hillary's nebulous popular vote claim. Because after the last three states have voted, we will know once and for all if the last acceptable metric (Including Florida and Michigan and part of Uncommitted for Obama) is one that Hillary can claim.
If she CAN'T claim it and I don't think she will be able to, then Obama can send out a memo to all press and surrogates saying "Look, even when you count Michigan where I wasn't on the ballot, as long as you count it in a rational way, without thinking that I had zero supporters, I am still ahead" and the Clinton campaign will NOT be able to argue with that. They can try, but Obama's argument is simple enough to be understood by the average person.
But if she WAS ahead, if she nets that much out of Puerto Rico, then the Obama campaign's pushback will be all about how Michigan and Florida cannot be included because he didn't campaign and wasn't on the ballot and Puerto Rico can't vote in the general election and the popular vote doesn't count anyway and etc, etc. The same stuff they are doing now.
The current policy where they won't engage with her argument will make it easier for him to act accordingly AFTER we know what the popular vote really is.
Again, I don't think she will net enough out of Puerto Rico.
But yeah, I think the Obama campaign's messaging on this issue is spot-on.