And if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass a-hoppin'.
Seriously, this is just ridiculous. Over at Salon, Sean Wilentz puts forth the basic argument is that if we could change the rules in mid-election, Hillary would be ahead. But you can't change the rules in mid-election, and had the rules been different in the beginning, there's no telling how each campaign would have laid out their strategy.
Let's take a moment to deconstruct this article piece by piece. I give you the third paragraph:
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.
Wilentz is arguing that the Democratic system, which delivers delegates proportionally and is therefore a better representation of the popular will than a winner-take-all approach, is actually a convoluted, eccentric, anti-democratic approach. For reasons not clear to anyone, he goes on to suggest that since the presidential election is a winner-take-all system, then the primary should be too.
In fact, the third paragraph is so chock full of absurdities, that I had to break it in two:
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... 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.
Wow, that's some amazing insight. If Clinton were leading in pledged delegates, she wouldn't be accused over trying to overturn the expressed will of the party via the superdelegates. And yes, in that event it would be almost inconceivable that she'd fail to get the remaining votes she needed, just as it is inconceivable now that Obama will fail to do so.
Of course, Obama's lead is really nothing more than a devious plot on his part to disenfranchise voters:
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.
Is this really so hard to comprehend? He wasn't on the ballot in Michigan, and the only solution offered to the mess would have left out independents who chose to vote in the Republican primary since they knew the Democratic primary was meaningless; in other words, the only solution offered would have likely disenfranchised a large chunk of Obama's base. And neither state had the funds to hold the contests anyway. There was a lot of conjecture about somehow raising the funds, but I never saw the article that said these states had actually secured funds. They couldn't even secure a plan on how to hold re-votes. And again, the Wilentz continues to imagine a reality that doesn't exist. If only we counted the votes in that state where nobody campaigned, and that other state where one candidate wasn't even on the ballot, then this would all work out for Hillary.
Having argued so well the case for Florida and Michigan, Wilentz goes on to bloviate on Nevada:
In Nevada, Clinton also won a popular majority... Why, in deference to the clear-cut Nevada popular majority, doesn't Obama cede the majority of the state's delegates to Clinton? Because, according to the rules, he's entitled to those delegates. But why are the rules suddenly sacrosanct and the popular vote irrelevant? Might it be because the rules, and not the popular vote, now benefit Obama?
It's really hard to comprehend the vacant, willful stupidity of this statement. Why doesn't Obama voluntarily give over delegates he rightfully won by campaigning in accordance with party rules? Why does Obama respect those rules? Um, because he's a Democrat. There seems to be some implication that at some other point, Obama maligned the party rules, but I have no idea to what Wilentz is referring. Heck, Wilentz is the one arguing we ignore party rules and seat Florida and Michigan, and now, two paragraphs later he's actually gone to the lengths of disparaging Obama for adhering to the rules.
But this might be my overall favorite part:
Obama's totals thus far have come in great part from state caucuses nearly as much as from actual primaries. (Eleven out of the 30 states and other entities he has won held caucuses, not primaries. Washington held both, as did Texas, where Obama won the caucuses and lost the popular vote.)
See? Because Obama's only won 15 primaries and 12 caucuses, it's clear that Hillary Clinton with her astounding 15 primary victories and one caucus win should be leading. It's very nearly impossible to wrap one's head around the insanity of that statement. Hillary's won 16 states, 15 primaries and one caucus. Obama has also won 15 primaries and he won them by far larger margins than Clinton won hers. Moreover, in addition to those 15 primary victories, Obama also has 12 caucus wins. Explain to me how this is a weakness?
And finally, there's the oft trotted out defeatism so prominent among Democratic pundits:
In 2004, Democrats lost most of the states where Obama's delegates come from now. The Democrats are likely to lose most of those states again in 2008, no matter how much his supporters speak of winning crossover votes.
Oh, goodness, Obama's expanding the map and getting Democrats energized in Republican strongholds? Well that's obviously just not good for the party... at least according to Sean Wilentz. Maybe Obama won't win most of the red states he's carried in the primaries. But recent polls definitely suggest he can change the map and secure victory with new states. And it's not like he's going to lose New Jersey, New York or California. Comparing these primary victories to the general election is just intellectual dishonesty, or fundamental ignorance.
That Wilentz wrote any of these paragraphs individually without blood coming out of his ears is impressive. That he was able to construct an entire article out of equally non-sensical ideas without falling dead at his computer is evidence of a divine miracle. Such twisted reasoning would leave most of us bed-ridden for life.
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