I'm beginning to think they're on a mission to disenfranchise me personally any way they can.
Way back in February, I sent a letter to the Clinton campaign explaining why I was no longer supporting her bid for the presidency. It was an eleventh hour conversion: a few days before the Washington caucuses I started reading Mrs. Clinton's comments about the states she hadn't won, and about caucuses in general, and what I read drove me to say, in part:
I take great offense, not easily forgiven or forgotten, at being told I don't matter as a voter. But I take greater offense at being told the election will be decided without me, and that you as a candidate are not asking us, the people, to elect you -- you are telling us, the people, how it's going to be.
I've lived in that country long enough. I will fight tooth and nail not to live in it any longer.
I wish I could have voted for the first woman to run for president in the United States. But of course, to hear you tell it, you don't need me.
Their latest set of goalposts is kind of like saying they're going to kick a field goal through the basketball hoop...Read on.
I went to the Washington caucus and cast my vote for Obama, along with 70% of the attendees in my precinct. Previous caucusers in my legislative district estimated that there were 10 times as many attendees as in 2004.
But Washington doesn't tally individual attendance at caucuses, at least not as a certified result of the process. This means that Washington cannot contribute to the thoroughly-debunked "popular vote" metric. Neither does Iowa, whose rules are even more complicated than Washington. Neither do Maine or Nevada.
Daily Courage published a study in which they attempt to give equal weight to caucuses by using a conservative formula to produce popular vote totals for caucus states based on Democratic voter turnout and demographics in primaries. Their attempt at estimation is notable because it does not simply add the number of caucus voters for states that tabulate those results: instead, it establishes a sort of common denominator by using demographic data to project likely primary outcomes that are consistent with the winner of the caucus and make adjustments for the smaller margins of victory Obama earns in primaries (as compared to caucuses). They conclude:
The Combined Effect on the Popular Vote
Armed with our state-by-state estimates of primary voters and Obama’s margin of victory, we combine the estimates to predict that Obama would have won these 13 caucus states by 778,000 votes.12 Since the caucuses actually gave Obama a boost of just 169,000 votes, our calculations suggest that Obama’s lead in the current national popular vote tally would be roughly 600,000 votes larger had all the caucus states held primaries.
Today Clinton's surrogates are all over the place, plumping up the "popular vote" meme and claiming victory in the popular vote thanks to her win in Pennsylvania. Real Clear Politics has gotten into the game by running several different simulations, including two that give the edge to Clinton based on estimating caucus turnout numbers in Iowa, Maine, Nevada, and Washington and adding those oranges to the primary-vote apples:
Factors Calculated | Obama | Clinton | Spread |
Popular Vote Total | 14,417,619 | 49.2% | 13,917,009 | 47.5% | Obama +500,610 +1.7% |
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA* | 14,751,703 | 49.3% | 14,140,871 | 47.2% | Obama +610,832 +2.1% |
Popular Vote (w/FL) | 14,993,833 | 48.3% | 14,787,995 | 47.6% | Obama +205,838 +0.7% |
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA* | 15,327,917 | 48.4% | 15,011,857 | 47.4% | Obama +316,060 +1.0% |
Popular Vote (w/FL & MI)** | 14,993,833 | 47.4% | 15,116,304 | 47.8% | Clinton +122,471 +0.4% |
Estimate w/IA, NV, ME, WA* | 15,327,917 | 47.5% | 15,340,166 | 47.5% | Clinton +12,249 +0.04% |
*(Iowa, Nevada, Washington & Maine Have Not Released Popular Vote Totals. RealClearPolitics has estimated the popular vote totals for Senator Obama and Clinton in these four states. RCP uses the WA Caucus results from February 9 in this estimate because the Caucuses on February 9 were the "official" contest recognized by the DNC to determine delegates to the Democratic convention. The estimate from these four Caucus states where there are not official popular vote numbers increases Senator Obama’s popular vote margin by 110,224. This number would be about 50,000 less if the Washington primary results from February 19th were used instead of the Washington Caucus results.)
**(Senator Obama was not on the Michigan Ballot and thus received zero votes. Uncommitted was on the ballot and received 238,168 votes as compared to 328,309 for Senator Clinton.) |
All of that HTML table formatting just so you can see how fleeting a "victory" this popular vote sham is, even if she clings to it for now. After all, if the candidates were after popular vote, this would have been a very different campaign, and most definitely not a 50-state one.
That brings me to where I currently stand: Disenfranchised by the Clinton campaign again. Kicked to the curb in favor of states whose votes don't count according to the DNC, but do count according to Clinton.
Do any of us really matter to Hillary Clinton?