Barack Obama may win the
Democratic Party’s
presidential nomination, but he will have done so by gaming a system
injudiciously created by the party, which apparently didn’t see the
fallacies of its own rules. Call it a glitch in the system, Barack
Obama’s nomination may be an undemocratic one, which needs to be
addressed before he becomes the Democratic Party’s official
nominee, not after.
This is because
Barack Obama’s win will not represent the true votes of the Democratic
Party.
While you have to
admire the statistician who put Obama’s campaign strategy in place, it
may well get Barack Obama the party’s nomination but it will leave the
party with the weaker candidate.
Why?
Knowing that their
candidate was unlikely to win in the big primary states – and, in fact,
didn’t win the de facto states important to the Democratic
Party’s winning the general election -- the Obama campaign set its
markers down on winning the caucus states – which he mostly did.
Equate the strategy
to a poker game’s bluff a strategy that is nothing more than a raising
of a weak hand in hopes of driving out players with stronger hands. The
weaker hand may win because of the bluff, but in the end, the player
still had the weaker hand. Call it maximizing a disadvantage.
Here’s the problem:
winning in caucuses rather than in the nonbinding primaries means
winning with fewer votes and votes that are infinitely less
representative of the voters’ true will, which is documented more fairly
in the process of the democratic primary.
A perfect example of
the system’s glitch can be seen by reviewing what happened in the State
of Nebraska. On May 13, Barack Obama won the nonbinding primary in that
state by just 49 percent to 47 percent with a popular vote margin over
Obama’s rival, Hillary Clinton, by a mere 2,665. Compare this to the
striking contrast with his 68 percent to 32 percent, 13,681-vote margin
in the February 9 Nebraska caucus. While 38,571 Nebraskans voted in the
caucus, fully 93,757 voted in the primary.
Add to this that the
Democrats’ systems of allocating primary delegates by proportional
representation in congressional (or state Senate) districts as well as
statewide gives the advantage to a candidate who can coalesce the vote
among an identifiable bloc of voters that tends to be heavily
concentrated in certain congressional districts, it’s easy to see that
Obama’s win isn’t representative of all the voters’ will.
Barack Obama amassed
disproportionate delegates to votes successfully in states like South
Carolina, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio because he carried anywhere from
80 to 90 percent of the black vote winning by 7-to-2 or similar margins
in black majority congressional districts compared to other districts
with even numbers of delegates Clinton could win, but by no better than
2-to-2 or 3-to-3 splits.
Talk about the deck
being stacked against you!
It's
n wonder that there has been so much
anger by Hillary Clinton's supporters. Many of her
backers are furious over all of this and have threatened to vote for
Republican John McCain, not vote, or write-in Hillary rather than cast
their ballot for Obama if Hillary Clinton isn’t the party’s nominee.
This kind of threat
is made every election cycle by one side or the other and the party
doesn’t pay much attention because most voters come back to the party
come the fall. You can bet this won’t be the case this undemocratic
season.
Because this isn’t
any election year. This is the year that the first black candidate is
running against the first woman for the highest office in the land.
There’s the DNC’s debacle over Florida and Michigan. There’s the party’s
willingness to ignore what has been their strongest base, woman, and
form a new coalition of blacks to win the general election while
ignoring what are now being called Hillary Democrats, the white,
blue-collar voters.
But all of this
discounts the fact that besides these problems, the party may be
electing a nominee who got the nomination by fudging the numbers, which
is not the strongest way one ought to enter the general election against
the formidable presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, John McCain.
Obama will need the votes of all Democrats to win.
Since most of Obama’s
wins were in states that don’t matter to the Democrats winning come the
fall, there is no guarantee that Obama can amass enough Democratic
voters to help him win in the general election.
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton won those all important states
including, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, sorta a
full house.
The
Obama camp and the press are anxious for Hillary Clinton to get out of
the race. To some, Clinton
appears to be fishing like a player who is staying in a poker game longer
than advisable fishing for the card or two that will make the hand a
winner; she has every right to be.
She has a case that needs to be made,
and her strength in making it is contingent upon her proving that
despite his gaming the system, Barack Obama, at the end of the day,
still didn’t win the needed delegates to secure the nomination without
the help of the Superdelegates, and he might not win the popular vote
(some say she is already ahead in that metric).
So
far, Obama appears to be winning with his argument that he is winning in
the delegate count.
But
how he got there should not be ignored. And, of course, like any good
game player, Hillary Clinton is waiting and hoping for the wild card
still out there that may yet change the game.