What a useless article.

Hey, now. Really. It's not advocacy, it's just interesting. The McCain camp benefited from WTA, and it might have been different if it weren't. (Eric, would it?) It's just interesting. I mean are you political junkies or not? Jeez.

I think Jessica Alba is married, anyway.

Golly...I'm a chick and I think Jessica Alba is pretty.

I would like to see Michigan and Florida hold a caucus and/or primary before August, if it has to come down to these two states.

Perhaps I'm too hopeful, or perhaps I'm too smug, but I don't think it will come down to all this nitty gritty muddy stuff.

I think the next three weeks will tell all.

Call me hopeful....I don't mind.

This post has proved one very important thing:

Time for bed on the East Coast.

Hey, why stop there? And if she'd have won Illinois, wow, she'd really be ahead. And if she'd have won Missouri and Virginia and Minnesota and Colorado -- well, I just don't see how she could be beat. And really, to top it off, if she'd have won Iowa and South Carolina, none of this would even be happening!

This is so much fun. What's next? If the sun rises in the north tomorrow?

America would have benefited without a Bush Presidency

Of course, the reality is that the Electoral College vote IS winner take all.

One of the reasons superdelegates were left with significant discretionary powers is so that they could look at the results of the various primaries, and reflect on what makes the most sense in determining the true will of the people, as well as in determining the real electability of a candidate.

In that sense, slavish adherence to pledged delegate counts defeats that purpose. The best way to think of the superdelegates role is to compensate for the deficiencies in the count of pledged delegates. Everybody knew from Day One that that count could easily be skewed away from the true will of the people -- such as expressed, potentially, in the popular vote -- as well as away from true electability.

Actually, I'm grateful for the article. It's nerdy of me to find it interesting, of course. But so be it!

So.. Obama gets ZERO delegates from Florida? Obama is listed at 1,096 even with Florida included? Explain that to me..

So Obama gets no delegates out of Florida? You ave him at 1,096 even including Florida? Explain that to me..

And if my mother was a bicycle, I would be a tricycle.

Here is another "what-if"... .what if, Hillary was Bill Clinton's brother instead of his wife? Think she would be the same element of change?

It occurs to me that that many of the same Dems now upset that the primaries aren't winner take all, were the ones talking about abolishing the electoral college that screwed up the 2000 election.

What seems missing in all this is recognition that, in a general election, Democrats need to be able to compete in a broad array of states -- to elect the President and to have as many Senators, Congresspeople, and state officials as possible. We have a federal system in the United States, not just a system run by NY and CA and a couple of other large states. Building organization, presence, and strength across many states of various sizes pays off for a political party over time. That is what Obama's strategy does, not just for him but for the party. And it why I think the superdelegates will break for him if he carries some more states and holds it close in others.

Certainly, HRC's contempt for the small and modest-sized states has to leave many party leaders worried. CA and MA and NY etc are going to vote for Democrats in the general election no matter what, but the party also needs to carry MO, MN, WI, VA, IA, etc.

i think this might be the best reason to redo michigan and florida. i would expect the results to be roughly a draw. But without it party organization and presence is skipping a couple sizable states.

IT IS PROFESSIONALLY IRRESPONSIBLE TO EVEN PUBLISH THE RESULTS INCLUDING FL & MI.

The problem is that the FL and MI primaries were fatally flawed elections on several levels and are unrepresnetative of the electorate.

As long as you and other information sources continue to show MI and FL in this manner, you give these elections equal creditibility in the eyes of the viewer with the remainder of primaries in the U.S., which is a false perception.

The MI and FL elections need to be done over in a proper election or the delegates must not be seated. END OF STORY.

Comparisons like this could lead to false impressions and ultimately to the seating of delegates based on flawed primaries.

Please stop. Report MI and FL for what they were. Elections where the voters knew the results did not matter (affecting turnout); elections where the populace were deprived of critical exposure to the candidates; and (in the case of MI) elections where about 6% of the Democratic votes were thrown away becuase there was no notification that write-in candidates were not allowed.

MI and FL results are garbage AND NEED TO BE TREATED AS SUCH.

Scary when this kind of hypothetical shows up here. Next thing you know Penn will be quoting you...

Sounds like Penn issued relativist and reactionary cooked books propaganda....

And . . . . . it would have been better if the clintons ran unopposed. And . . . . it would have been better if obama wasn't running a much better campaign. And . . . . . it would have been better if penn was in bora bora. And . . . . (somebody stole my thunder already on this) it would have been better if the clintons ran in the republican primary. Silly.

I have done extensive analysis of the votes so far, and I have come to the conclusion that if Mark Penn were working for Obama, Hillary would be leading by a wide margin. I'm just sayin'...

Posted above, I'm posting it again:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/15/us/politics/20080215_DELEGATES_GRAPHIC.html

Yeah? and I would have benefitted from a gym memebership if i had one.

Thepoint is we dont have a winnertake all system so whats the point in even talking about this?

Eric,

Why put this out? If there is an INFORMATIVE point to this, would you please explain it? I can’t find it (whether you include Florida and Michigan in your count or not,) and I am trying really hard.

If you want to feed the political junkies, why stop at that?

If the primaries in all states had been held prior to any campaigning, Hillary would have won all (as it happened in Florida.) If Hillary's name was the only one in the ballot in all states, she would have won the primaries (as it happened in Michigan.) If Edwards hadn't signed off, he might have won the nomination...

I am pretty sure that if it had been a Winner-Take-All system, the candidates’ campaign strategies would have been different, no?

In such a case, there is really no way for you to know who would have won, unless you were a prophet. If so, please tell us about if Hillary was a man; if Obama had two heads; if Martin Luther King hadn’t been assassinated...

Maybe your only point is to have as many hits and comments to this page as possible. It is good for the sale of advertising spots. I don’t see spin here. I see a business strategy: Need those page hits!!

Mission accomplished!

From the Desk of:

Mark Poison Penn Head

Why are you counting the Obama Red State Victories?

How many times have we to tell you that they do not matter.

However if Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, two places that have voted Red in the past several Presidential elections, you better count them as great victories for HIllary or we will
drop one of our "Woman Hater" smear bombs on your site.

JTHB,

To you and the rest of the people in Florida who are whining about being disenfranchised:

Boo Effing Hoo.

Sorry to be harsh, but I, for one, am sick to death of Floridians perpetual sense of grievance and entitlement. (It does tend to explain your affinity for Hillary, however.)

Your state's DNC officials agreed with the rules when they were made. When your state's politios embarked upon their "rules are for little people and we're too important to have to obey them" effort, they were warned, over and over and over again that there would be consequences. The Democrats in your legislature "resisted" the state Republicans efforts to do this stupid thing about as hard as a dog resists a medium rare ribeye. And then, when the consequences actually came, it seems most people in your state they have the unmitigated self-absorbed gall to blame everyone in the country except their own politicians for this mess.

If the point of this mass exercise in selfish stupidity was to engage in a noble act of civil disobedience against the importance placed on Iowa and New Hampshire, then fine. But the point of civil disobedience, see, is to do the crime, suffer the penalty with quiet dignity and thereby inspire others to take up the cause of justice against an unjust law. It doesn't really work when you whine and piss and moan like about actually having to do the time. It kind of makes you all look more like Leona Helmsley than Mahatma Ghandi.

There is a principal here, and a damned important one, beyond the consequences to Hillary if she can't succeed in her selfless effort to assist you folks in your noble crusade to take a dump on the rules. That principle is this: if you guys win, then it means parties cannot maintain control over their own primary schedule and its every state for itself. You think you guys are the only state in the Union whose legislature thinks it is the center of the frikkin universe? Are you kidding me? Have you never met a Texan or a New Yorker? Or anyone from a state whose politicians call it "God's Country?"

If the parties lose control over their primaries, then there will be a state legislative race to be first that will eventually result in the first primary for 2012 being held sometime in January, 2009.

Yep, as I suspected in 2000, and again in 2004 and yet again in 2005, the resemblance of Florida to a great thorn stuck in the nation's ass (no offense to Georgia intended) is not a coincidence.

I like proportional representation. It makes candidates compete everywhere, not flyover ones they can't win outright.

In fact, it would be great to have proportional delegates for the electoral college itself. Then CA, NY, TX, etc would actually matter again. The current system is skewed too much in the favor of rural states, and the coasts are written off.

Well, let me draw you a picture. Oh, wait, someone else already has.

http://www.pollster.com/08-US-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

Snark and foodfighting aside, what's clear is that Hillary's people made the usually fatal error of believing their own hype. At the time they formally launched their Inevitability Tour, at the end of September, I thought it was a cooly calculated tactic to try to use her polling and name recognition advantage to crush the life out of the other campaigns before they could start eating into it. I never for a minute thought they really believed it themselves. Or, if they did, I never thought they'd be dumb enough to implement a campaign plan that assumed it was true.

In a way, even as I was sneering at all the adulatory hype from her supporters about how she Was Running the Most Perfect, Most Brilliantly Conceived and Flawlessly Executed Campaign in the History of the United States and Possible the World, I was also kind of buying into it. I really thought there had to be a core of hard-headed, clear thinking planning for every contingency going on behind the scenes, including advance work in post-Superduper Tuesday states. I honestly did think that Hillary was the kind of detail oriented, hands on manager who would leave nothing to chance and leave no worst case scenario unplanned for.

In hindsight, it is clear that we overestimated her and her campaign. It's all too easy, and all too human, to buy your own hype. It was all too likely that the things that they were saying to the masses would have psychological resonance with the people saying them and that that would effect their planning.

Or, alternately, it could be there were a lot more daring than anyone gives them credit for. Maybe they looked at the map, looked at their wallet and said, we have to go all-in on Super Tuesday because we aren't going to be able to compete if we don't win it then. And then, when that didn't happen, they did what every compulsive gambler does when they get gutted--scrounge up some more cash and head back to the tables to try to make it up.

Personally, I think all availible evidence points to the "bought their own hype" model.

Hi - I'm coming in late to this thread, but what is interesting to me about the article (and I don't think anyone has mentioned these points - but sorry if I missed it!) is that (1) regardless of how delegates are allocated - WTA or proportional, both Clinton and Obama make strong showings. They are each relatively close to the other regardless of which approach is used. This tells me the democrats have two strong candidates to choose from, and should feel pretty good about that. And (2) the article doesn't mention what would have happened on the REPUBLICAN side if the allocation was proportion (the math for that is much harder), but my estimate, using statewide election results as a proxy, is that McCain and Romney would be virtually TIED, with maybe Romney slightly ahead. So maybe all the obsession shouldn't be around who is more "legitimate" between Clinton or Obama - they both have a strong showing. In fact, it's really McCain who is only winning because of an arbitrary decision by the RNC about how to allocate delegates. Pretty interesting food for thought...

The "Obama would have campaigned differently" in this hypothetical only scratches the surface. Another question is whether Edwards would have dropped out earlier? Would fewer candidates have thrown their hat in the ring? Or, would candidates have forged alliances to keep a spoiler in the race, such as the tacit McCain - Huckabee axis that supposedly defeated Romney? Also added in is the issue of resources that would have been devoted by the two campaigns. Would they have had less to spend on Super Tuesday, and what would have been the effect?

Second, it is clear that the Michigan-Florida controversy would have been even more pivotal--and whatever side one is on in this debate, it is clear that it is bad for the Democrats. But if it was a WTA primary, would the DNC have sanctioned the states as harshly, or, would they have implemented something similar to the Republican solution? And if so, the impact of Hillary's wins in MI and FL would be halved. Perhaps the same controversy would have arisen about seating full-strength delegations, but the dynamics of the debate, and perhaps the outcome, would have been different.

As long as people are debating the controversy, my two-cents is that the blame does not fall on either of the candidates--it falls squarely on the DNC, who screwed up bigtime. I thought it was a bad idea when I heard about it before the voting had even begun. Now, it is up to the DNC to clean up the mess they made. I suspect some kind of compromise either a la the Republicans or otherwise. In any case, I think it behooves the DNC to step forward and take the blame for its actions, regardless of where it comes down on the seating question, yes, no or in the middle.

After the State of New Hampshire ran out, under cover of darkness, and voted for Hillary Clinton, I can understand the reluctance on the part of pollsters to call Texas & Ohio too closely. I have my own suspicions though, that both the lone star state, and the buckeye state will hand Hillary her hat. At least I hope that they do. In fact, I’m rather enjoying the way things are working out for Hillary. It couldn’t happen to a nicer girl. But then, what if Hillary had been a nicer girl: http://theseedsof9-11.com

How Quickly We Forget

Dear American Voters,

Please do not forget the way the White House was left in 2001 at the end of the Clinton Presidency. How disappointed and disillusioned and disgraced we Americans felt about the office of the president of the United States.

It is no wonder that the office of the presidency went to the
republicans for the past 8 years ... We were left with a bitter taste when it came to the presidents office due to the Clintons.

So here we are 2008 and Hillary has decided to run for president!

I ask you to please remember what went on the last time the Clintons were in the White House. And if it has been to long, there are plenty of websites to refresh your memory.

Then ask yourself if voting for Hillary is what you really want to
do? Do you really want Hillary to be president of the United States, in our White House again? Could the Clintons do it again? Could they leave it the same way they left it before?

My favorite thing of all about Hillary’s candidacy is that the
Clintons really believe we American voters are that stupid or
forgetful, that if they pretend to be nice and say all the right
things whether they mean them or not, we as sheep will be herded into 4 years of another disaster ...

We have a sound candidate in Barack Obama.

Please do not forget!