Are you insignificant?

Don't comments like these only serve to highlight the strategic myopia of Hillary's campaign in pushing hard to win, often narrowly, states with large populations and not even campaign in sparsely populated states (allowing Obama to carry them by super-super-majorities largely based on the fact that he was the only one who bothered to show up)?

Look at Wyoming. Hillary spent modestly there, but spent and sent Bill to the counties that she could take handily or contest. It was a narrow delegate victory for Obama at little expense to Clinton. Probably unrealistic to expect her to have been able to do that with smaller 2/5 states given what we now know about her finances at the time, but her supporters and donors ought to be up in arms about how she didn't spend the relatively tiny amount of money and effort it would've taken to slash Obama's delegate gains after Super Tuesday and before 3/4 in half.

Jesus. The ridiculousness never ends.

That's utter balderdash. Those 'big states' are traditional Democratic blue states that will go to any Democratic nominee in the general.

Yeah, because who can win by a couple percentage points against fellow Democrats has a ton to do with who can beat McCain in a general election..

I'm so sick of these disingenuous lies...so pathetic. The Clintons and their surrogates are shameless..

Lastly, so far as I know, Obama has yet to point to an irrelevant metric to define his success in the race. Certainly not one, like electoral college success, that's immediately belied by poll after poll pitting Obama/Clinton V McCain. And he could! What about surface area? Whether you normalize by statewide popular vote or go winner take all, OBAMA DOMINATES THE SQUARE MILEAGE CONTEST. Clinton literally doesn't have an inch to stand on here!

At this rate, they will claim that one who wore garish pantsuits only should be the nominee.

If there were some empirical basis for believing that states that voted for Hillary in the primary would automatically go to her in the general and would never to Obama in the general, that would make some sense, except for the part where it rationalizes flushing the entire primary process down the toilet.

However, since there is absolutely no empirical basis for that assertion, and, indeed, electoral history indicates that most of Hillary's states would go Democratic no matter who the nominee is, and the rest would be close regardless of who the nominee was, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Last paragraph of that article says:

At the time, Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, said, “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”

Respect the will of the people? What a stupid way to decide elections.

Very good point by Bayh.

Now we find out aboout another poor choice Wright Rezco and now Jones...
Bara Obama frequently cites his impressive record as an Illinois state legislator as an indicator of his experience in running for President.
Turns out, according to former Chicago reporter Todd Spivak, all of his legislative accomplishments were in his final 7th year and were handed to him by his mentor, Ill. State Senate President Emil Jones. Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit." how has Obama repaid Jones? Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district. For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state’s lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife’s job and his stepson’s business

Very good point by Bayh.

Now we find out aboout another poor choice Wright Rezco and now Jones...
Bara Obama frequently cites his impressive record as an Illinois state legislator as an indicator of his experience in running for President.
Turns out, according to former Chicago reporter Todd Spivak, all of his legislative accomplishments were in his final 7th year and were handed to him by his mentor, Ill. State Senate President Emil Jones. Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit." how has Obama repaid Jones? Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district. For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state’s lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife’s job and his stepson’s business

This is as likely as a reason for me voting for Clinton as having Clinton as the DEM nominee cuz it will rob McCain of his strongest running-mate.

Reading this story is like reading that monkey's throw their poo at zoo patrons . . . It is funny in the moment but meaningless.

I don't think the objective here is to persuade SDs of the soundness of the argument. It is to try to point to some rationale for the SDs to mouth when they are challenged with the "Barack's effectively won, what are you waiting for?" question. I think the Clinton's "persuasion" of the SDs takes the form of threatening to publicly brand them Judases, boil their pets, etc., if the come out for Obama.

Wyoming, unfortunately is one of the states that don't count. And now we're learning delegates don't count, but fictional elections which have not occured (and likely never will) do, and fictional sniper-fire and fictional experience and the Clintons on the fictional high road.

Enough... Evan Bayh knows better. And so do we.

Why are you posting verbatim from Talk Left instead of just linking to it, and why not post the actual article the post you're copying is based on why you're at it - http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/print

Oh wait, that's because it's just a reporter with a grudge who failed at covering Illinois politics when he was in Illinois - "Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an asshole at a political fund-raiser. Now here he is blasting me from hundreds of miles away for a story that just went online but hasn't yet hit local newsstands."

This is an absurd argument, even for the Clintons, as it assumes that CA and NY would go for McCain if Obama was the nominee... If we take those two states out of the analysis, then the electoral vote thing looks about even...

4 of the 5 "big states" that Clinton has won are traditionally blue states that would require a cataclysm to vote for a republican over a democrat. However, Obama puts other states in play - Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, and others, that Clinton cannot, meaning McCain will need to spend time and money there - as opposed to focusing on chipping away at the democratic lead in other states.

I don't think the super D's are this stupid.

There seems to be a trend to repeating the notion that Supers aren't stupid. I have yet to see that point proven. Evan Bayh is a Super. Ed Rendell is a Super. They tout this reasoning as unassailable. There is a very good chance that there is a high percentage of stupid Supers.

Just sayin'.

I think the best way to resolve this is to have Obama and Clinton have a thumbwar. Best 2 out of 3 wins. Either that or Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Sen. Evan Bayh is just another member of the DLC (Republican-Lite) faction of the Democratic party. This is a Dem primary... strange that the goal posts keep getting changed from the Clinton end of the campaign.

I'd say this pretty much sums it up, and is worth posting again...Thanks billysumday!

http://areyouinsignificant.blogspot.com/

There's also the assumption that TX will go for Clinton, which is not a likely scenario, even given TX's minority-majority status. TX didn't go for Bill Clinton either time. Of course, I don't think TX will ultimately go for Obama either in the general election.

Bayh's future metrics for superdelegates to use to choose:

Whoever's candidate won the states with "hi" in the middle of their names. Cause that's friendly, and general election voters like friendly.

Whichever candidate won states that had skyscrapers were destroyed on 9/11. Because 9/11 changed everything.

The candidate that won in Florida, because Bush v. Gore determined that the general elections should turn on the outcome there.

Whenever I see a post like this on TPM I RUN to the comments section. There is no better way for me to get a chuckle.

No one actually believes this stuff. Some campaigns get to the point where they just have to say what they gotta say to convince (fool) a small group of people out there that are wavering on their side.

I suspect this is more about looking viable to donors and staying on the offensive somehow to look tough.

It's politics.

NEWS FLASH- McCain is a Zombie.
Next!!!

Is Bayh slow, or does he just think we are?

The Electoral College votes are not determined by the primary process. To say that the College's results will be determined by how Obama does against Hillary is either barmy or disingenuous.

Bayh is smart - he knows that the other super delegates know that what he's saying doesn't really make good sense and that he's stuck into seeming like a good soldier for Hillary.

He's paying now for endorsing her too soon. This obviously foolish statement (to anyone but Bill and Hillary themselves) is his way of imploring super delegates not to get on the Hillary bandwagon now.

Rendell is in the same bind. That's why yesterday on MTP, he stuck up for Hillary, the candidate, while clearly acknowledging the delegate math was against her.

The funny thing, of course, is that the electoral college is exactly why the "big state argument" is so stupid in the first place.

If we elected presidents in the general via the popular vote only, then we'd want a candidate who could dig deep into the big states and pull out a few million extra votes. So theoretically, I guess you'd want "the most popular" dem in those big states to run.

But with the electoral college, it's the exact opposite, of course. The standard strategy is make sure you get one more vote than McCain in NY and CA, then move on to a state in play. So because of the EC, state-size is made rather irrelevant.

Anyway, I know he's just trying to be a loyal soldier, but this sure makes Bayh (who despite being a prime DLCer, I've always tended to like) look like a dope.

The Clintons have repeatedly said they believe the party will unify after the convention. That means they will campaign for Obama, or Obama for her. He'll get most of her votes from the primary,or she'll get most of his.

That's why any simple look at primary votes is simple-minded.

Of course, if the Clinton team keeps this up, they can make it less so. They're telling Clinton voters Obama doesn't deserve their respect, and every time they do it, more voters will carry that lesson to the general. They're outraging Obama voters, and with every round, a few more reach a decision that will matter in December.

Gee, this is a severe blow to my self-esteem. It turns out that I truly don't matter, just as I always thought.

Thus continues the saga of Clinton's dozen-or-so state strategy, her disregard of party rules, the disenfranchismenet of Obama and Edwards supporters in FL and MI and the writing off of entire swaths of the so-called Union.

Perhaps we should consider seceding from the union so that at least we could comfort each other in our invisibility to the party.

Of course, it's bullshit. Does anyone here think the MSM will buy this? Or will they think it's final proof of her campaign's desperation?

Dear God will this realignment of goalposts EVER end? Hillary's campaign is over. There is no way she can ever win committed delegates, popular vote, number of states or any other reasonable metric. So now she's got Evan Bayh running this garbage up the flagpole?

Somebody needs to apply the metaphorical coup de grâce to her campaign NOW.

Eric, you report this with a straight face, as if the only thing wrong with Bye's "new metric" is that it happens not to be as favorable to Clinton as Bye seems to think it is. What's wrong with it, however, is that it's shockingly irrational as a metric. Why not report it any other way?

Perhaps you're concerned that if you identify the "new metric" for the absurdity it is, you'll be charged with press bias. But the only the press bias here is to report something objectively preposterous as if it might be reasonable depending on point of view.

By inviting the SDs to imagine the primary contest as a GE match-up, the Clinton people want us to accept three propositions:

1. Clinton's primary wins will translate into GE wins.

2. Obama's primary losses will translate into GE losses.

3. Most of Obama's primary wins will translate into GE losses. (The Clinton argument of previous week concerning Obama's red-state wins.)

Thus the conclusion:

4. Obama will lose the GE with only a handful of blue states he won in the primaries -- with the caveat, of course, that he might lose those as well!

This is objectively childish thinking, and anyone interested in objective reporting would say so, and not try to dignify it with the pseudo-scientific term "new metric." It's not a metric of anything but the intellectual bankruptcy of the Clinton campaign.

Bayh is another hypocrite using pretzel logic as pointed out here:

http://dickpolman.blogspot.com/2008/03/hillary-surrogate-retrofits-his.html

Clinton campaign's theme song should be Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic>

Greg, you post a lot of opinions and pointed language in many of your posts. (I'm not meaning this as a diss, btw, it's your blog.)

But I wonder what your thoughts are on this one.

Is the idea to let the INSANITY of this speak for itself? Or, are you implying that this seems like an appropriate solution?

I'm curious about the admitted Hillary supporters too. Does this new idea seem reasonable to you? Can you rationalize this without outright admitting that literally anything anyone can think of that would put Hillary as the nominee is okay?

I just realized that the title of this post is misleading in itself, and reflects what the MSM will do with this. Even given the absurdity revealed by the post itself, the title implies that Clinton actually offers a valid electoral college argument.

This reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit about the Rodney King trial (paraphrasing)...

Officer Koon: "It's all in how you look at the tape...for example, if you run it backwards, you see us help King up and send him on his way."

And if she gets the nomination and loses the general election then she'll say the Electoral College won't count.

Why don't the Clintons and their supporters just come out and say what they really think:

ELECTIONS don't count. Hillary should just be appointed President - like George W. Bush was.

And do you agree that the bill requiring interrogations in capital cases be taped was a good bill? Or do you just want to slam Obama?

Instead of discussing Obama's minister's sermons, the MSM needs to start calling the Hillbillary campaign on these ridiculous arguments on how the sure loser thinks the rules should be changed so she can win.
Most of the time when the big state argument has come up, the political pundits just repeat the argument with no discussion. While anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that Obama will win Cal, NY, and other Dem states in the general, the voters don't neccesarily have common sense, as amply demonstated by their acceptance of the bogus results of the 2 Bush selections.
These MSM morons still claim that Hillbillary won Texas even though it is undisputed that Obama earned more delegates.
The MSM has also failed to publicize the truth about the votes in OH and TX--that Hillary only won b/c Limbaugh Repugs crossed over to vote for her.

This is a lame argument for him to make. Just more grasping at straws, and little else.

How about this Evan? Obama will carry the states Hillary would win anyway, plus he puts some purple/red states into play. Not only that, but Obama will help downticket Democrats, and Hillary will only hurt them.

Hmmm, expand the party and have a new leader in Obama that people want to vote for, or business as usual with Hillary? Which one sounds better to me?

Obama is the future, Hillary is the past. The choice, at least for me, is clear. Obama.