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Electoral votes map 5/16/08
This entry was written by vjp and posted on Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 10:31 am and filed under 2008 Presidential Race, Hillary Clinton, National, Politics. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
13 Comments
Live by identity politics, die by identity politics.
Cokie Roberts’ entire argument hinges on the nomination process being broken, asking questions like, “How can it make sense for Idaho, Kansas and Louisiana to have a bigger impact on choosing the Democratic nominee than Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio?” DELEGATES ARE ALREADY APPORTIONED AMONG THE STATES BASED ON PERFORMANCE IN PAST ELECTIONS. And that’s true in both parties. Hw did Idaho and Kansas and Louisiana end up mattering? Clinton surendered those three states, while Obama never surrendered in PA, NJ or OH. And the ease with which the Clinton campaign surrendered completely in states that she actually did have to still compete in doesn’t say a whole lot to me about what Roberts’ calls Clinton’s “tenacity.”
She didn’t lose because the system is broken or because democratic voters are stupid. She lost because she ran a bad primary campaign, and Obama ran a good one. Nobody stole this election. It was Hillary Clinton’s race to lose going into the primary, and she lost it.
As far as the maps goes: Obama and McCain both have a lot of work to do, and they both have half a year to do it in before the election is decided in November. We’ll see what the map looks like in six months.
Looking at this from across the pond, the whole notion that a such an important national decision can be reached via a succession of local polls stretching over a period of six months does look strange.
Don’t get me wrong, because our UK electoral process is massively imperfect, too, but the whole US primary system seems to have been set up deliberately so that earlier results influence the later ones. That seems quite a remarkable anomaly within the democratic process, because one of the fundamentals of voting is that you don’t know how anyone else has voted.
Nevertheless, this is the mechanism currently in place for selecting candidates for nomination, and so I agree with the previous commenter that the candidates have to live by the results. It’s way too late to start complaining that the results don’t give a proper mandate, or that they somehow and unfairly haven’t selected the best candidate for winning the election.
The truth is that everyone knew the rules, before the contest began, and to infer now that the result duly delivered might be flawed is disingenuous, to say the least.
But could / should the primary process be revised and improved in future elections? That’s a different question entirely, and it seems there might be a strong case to answer.
Would any nation elect a government this way? Or, putting it differently, would it be a good idea for November’s Presidential election to be played out like this, state by state, until next May?
No, I don’t think so, either.
Actually, I think a lot of voters have been shocked to learn how the primary process actually operates – and they did not agree to it in advance.
The voters. This is about the voters, remember, not the candidates. Don’t say “everyone” when you really mean “some Democratic Party honchos”.
The question has to be whether the process serves democracy. Seems to me the answer is “No.”
No, Avedon, it is NOT about the voters, or the candidates. It’s about the parties.
None of us has a “right” to be part of the parties’ nominating process. In fact, none of us even has the right to vote for President. (Actually, we vote for electors, who may or may not vote for the person we wanted them to, but we don’t have the right to vote for electors, either.)
The parties may choose their candidates in any way they see fit. In the Republicans’ case, they preferred a winner-take-all system. In the Democrats’ case, the party chose to apportion delegates based on how heavily the district voted for John Kerry in 2004, and to hedge their bets with “superdelegates.” The Libertarians, Greens, and other “third parties” have no primaries at all.
Similarly, just a few years back, the Democratic Party had a primary to decide who would run against George Allen. Nobody came. This year, the Republicans are choosing their nominee for Senate at their state convention. Both are equally valid and legal methods of choosing candidates.
All the talking heads this morning were full of disrespect and dismissive of HRC. Shocking!
The map shows what the unpledged need to understand, HRC carries FL, OH and WV and the WH while BO will not carry them and will put MI (maybe PA) in play for McCain. Additionally, HRC will lead in the popular vote when all is said and done, even if you assign all the unpledged votes to BO from MI.
None of those 20 or 30 thousand red state caucus goers who have put BO in the pledged delegate lead can change that arithmetic.
Newport News Dem,
I thought I told you last night that there is no way in hell hillary carries West Virginia. Given the choice between a biracial Barack and hillary they chose hillary, which i find typical, and given thechoice between a white woman and a white male they will choose McCain unless the world turns upside down. that is West Virginia in a nutshell. Also you have to read deeper into the map. Barack is way closer to winning many of those states than Hillary, that you consider red states. under this map remember hillary would have to win a completely red state to win Virginia. Did you happen to notice that Barack in north Caroliona,South carolina, and Virginia change them from a killing with Hillary to a toss up with Obama. These maps will change daily and you were the one who told me that when we went to that website.
Well, let’s nominate HRC so we can find out who is right on WV! Give me OH and FL (and WV) with HRC over losing red states by a slimmer margin with BO. It’s all about those 270 votes in the Electoral College.
I will pick up the next bar tab should BO win the nomination and carries either VA, NC or SC. And yes, the dynamics of the race will change over the coming months, for the worse if more foreign policy gaffes come from BO like this one. Our problems with Afghanistan is we are sending our arabic translators to Iraq instead of Afghanistan. Ouch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-Ak9WuUio
I can only imagine the blogger/media uproar if HRC made such a gaffe. The Orange Stain, Raising Krap and MSNBO would be apoplectic and full of derision and condemnation of HRC. We would be greeted with another special comment from Keith Obamermann on how HRC should drop out of the race. This ranks right up their with Poland will never be under Soviet influence under a Ford Administration!
We are sending more of our potential translators to Iraq than to Afghanistan. how is that an ouch and as far as that goes he completely humiliated Bush and McCain on national TV for calling us Dems and him appeasers. I believe that includes you. The press has never said hrc should stop her campaign so leave them out of it. HRC simply did what other politicians before her did and that is miscalculate their opponent (hence Michigan vs. Division 2 opponents) now thats an ouch!! She thought she would be ordained and it just didn’t happen like she laid out. Plain and simple she had a screwed up strategy and a screwed up team. Don’t blame the press, blame Macauliffe and the rest of the team. As for the general, I will gladly buy you a beer if Obama loses Pennsylvania, but you owe me if Obama wins Wisc.,Michigan,Colorado,Iowa,New Mexico,and at least one of the three southern states you mentioned. the electoral map will be completely changed on what is necessary to win.
Without getting into too many technical details about linguistic nuances, Arabic isn’t the dominant language in Afghanistan or Pakistan, so not as many Arabic translators are needed in the border region between those two nations. Sen. Obama’s point–and it is valid–is that there are many foreign fighters of Arabian decent in that region who speak one Arabic dialect or another (among them Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi) but the need still isn’t particularly pressing compared to Iraq, where everyone speaks a singular dialect of Arabic.
BTW..today’s EC totals……
HRC 310 McBush 228
BO 253 McBush 285
HRC will handily win the democratic popular primary votes and will win in a General election blowout.
ARE YOU UNPLEDGED DELGATES PAYING ATTENTION?????
I hope they are.
Now, we’ve got to find a way to get some more blue on that map! Hillary supporters, we need you to close ranks!