Earlier today, Hunter wrote:
What bothers me, however, is the increasingly insulting quality of the campaign and surrogate spin as each successive campaign day wears on. It is fine to celebrate a Pennsylvania win -- by all means, a victory is a victory, and a significant and hard-fought one at that -- but all I ask in politics is that the spinners of each camp try their best to not make it quite so obvious that they think the rest of us really are a spectacular new species of rubes, able to be led by the nose to whatever ridiculous and improbable conclusion would best benefit a particular camp.
My good friend Jerome has done just that, picking up on the most ridiculous of Clinton spins today:
After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama.
Estimates vary slightly, but according to Real Clear Politics, Hillary has received 15,095,663 votes to Sen. Obama's 14,973,720, a margin of more than 120,000 votes. ABC News reported this morning that "Clinton has pulled ahead of Obama" in the popular vote.
Actually, that's simply ridiculous. Go to Real Clear Politics and look at their popular vote estimates (pre-Pennsylvania):
Popular vote total: Obama +717,086
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA: Obama +827,308
Popular Vote (w/FL): Obama +422,314
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA: Obama +532,536
Popular Vote (w/FL *MI): Obama +94,005
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA: Obama +204,227
So see what they have done -- the Clinton campaign and Jerome have taken the roughly 215,000 net votes Clinton gained in Pennsylvania, and added them to the popular vote count that includes the unsanctioned contests in Michigan and Florida, and excludes caucuses in four states. How's that for inclusiveness?
It gets worse. That Michigan vote estimate? Obama wasn't on the ballot. If you count the "uncommitted" votes for Obama -- all of them anti-Hillary votes, remember -- that would add 237,762 votes to Obama's total.
Which means that in Clinton and Jerome's world, Clinton is ahead in the popular vote only IF you exclude four caucus states, IF you include two unsanctioned states, and IF you "disenfranchise" every voter in Michigan who voted against Hillary Clinton.
That takes a new and particularly audacious level of chutzpah.