Well Obama's people should just say "okay." Because they're going to win the popular vote count too.

Not according to da rules. We all know what rules mean to the clintonistas. Nothing.

All they keep doing is moving the goal posts so that she can keep nuking the party and dem nominee to prepare for another run in 2012. Who's the challenger on the horizon if her game plan plays out. Anyone know? I want to start organizing and donating now.

You go girl.

If by "more democratic" you mean DISENFRANCHISING caucus states!!

Caucuses have lower turn out, so how can they compete with primary results?

States are allowed to determine their own method - primary, caucus, or both (TX) -- and by counting delegates, you respect each states results.

Clinton is trying to disnefranchise states which don't favor her, and to cherry pick the very very few states that do.

Also note that "big states" are already accounted for plenty in the delegate apportionment. ie. California has far more delegates than midsize or small states. Essentially, she's trying to doublecount the big states.

Bottomline: Delegates are the way this is decided, not some other bs method which happens to be convenient for cheatocrat Clinton.

The other difference between popular votes and delegates is that it's harder to get a precise figure on popular votes, given the way caucus votes are counted. Clinton supporters tend to forget, for example, that Washington State's popular vote count hasn't been released yet.

Therefore, even though every reputable tally has Obama way up, by a margin that can't be overcome by Pennsylvania, there's enough haze that some questions can be raised about who actually might have the lead when all is said and done

And Clinton supporters also want to count Michigan votes, absurd as it is since Obama honored his promise and took his name off the ballot. Her supporters have nothing to say about Clinton's integrity on this issue.

I would take Governor Rendell's position more seriously if he at least would acknowledge that the 'popular vote' tallies fail to count the numbers of voters who caucused. How can there be real comparisons, when structurally, all those individuals are not counted?

It's a Hail Mary.

Someone please remind me why the Democratic Party has nominating rules at all.

Am I the only person thinking that there might be more than a few Americans who think a party that can't even nominate a candidate without all this nonsense is non functional and should not be handed power?

Because on the other side they're seeing that a whole lot of folks who hate McCain are willing to work with him to accomplish things. On this side, well it turns out everyone on this side is a racist or a misogynyst.

Certainly "popular vote" should be considered along with "pledged delegates," "coattails" and other factors. But I call bullshit when HRC tries to count MI and FL.

How can you count popular votes from races where:

1) the voters were told their votes would not count. (MI and FL are the only two states in the country where Dem turn-out was lower than Repub turn-out);

2) the candidates are not allowed to campaign;

3) one of the candidate's name does not appear on the ballot;

Calling these "democratic elections" is a claim that would make Joe Stalin blush, but appearently the Clintons and many of their supporters have no shame.

But the rules state that you need the most delegates to win. Are you going to complain about the electoral college in November, Governor? I doubt it. So shut up.

desperately grasping at straws IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

What rules state that superdelegates must gravitate to the winner of the most pledged delegates and not to the winner of the popular vote?

And what was your position on such when Gore won the popular vote in 2000?

Just wondering.

Obama is up by over 800,000, if you include all the caucus states (w/ estimates for how many turned out in states where totals weren't reported), so this seems silly. Of course, if you throw in the Florida straw poll, the Michigan Potemkin election, and leave out caucus states, then, all of a sudden, it's close.

But the main point is: what popular vote? I mean, how can we compare/compile the popular vote of all these states when some states have early voting, and others don't. Some have absentee balloting, others don't. Some were caucuses, others primaries. Some included independents, others didn't. Some included not just independents but also Republicans. Some you could register (or re-register) the day of the election, some you had to register a week or two in advance, some you had to register a month in advance.

There's no uniformity at all in what's being measured in each of these states. I mean, this was one of the main reasons why we use delegates in the first place. As a proxy for popular support that ignores all those logistical issues of just adding votes up from different states.

What's more, sure, sometimes Obama might benefit from "delegate math". But Clinton has too. Look at Alabama, e.g. where Clinton only got 42% of the votes but got 48% of the delegates.

It's very very unlikely the Hillary will able to legitimately overtake Obama in the popular vote without also overtaking him with delegates. But that's not the play here; the play is to then say, "well, ok, so we don't know how many people actually voted for Obama in caucus states, if you can even call that voting at all, so let's ignore those...and, well, Michigan and Florida voted, so let's count those...and look, Hillary won!"

It's just another stab at the same argument: Obama's states should be ignored, and we should include MI and FL in Hillary's column even though their elections were total shams.

Pretty gross.

Hillary is destroying the Democratic party and any chance of the Democrats winning the election in the Fall. Can't some of the party elders talk to her before her scorched earth policy goes completely nuclear?

Exactly. Further, delegates are awarded to areas based upon the intensity of Democratic support in past contests.
Rendell is right on this though: as a super-delegate, he can vote for anyone he chooses. And, if he wants to invent this specious "democracy of the popular vote" as a way of covering his ass when he votes as a superdelegate in August, I'm okay with that, too.
But I've got a problem with his trying to misinform the public. What's "democratic" about a willfully bamboozled voting public?

Folks: Do not miss a very important concession. The Clinton Camp just blinked. Rendell is actually admitting that Senator Obama will win the most elected delegates.

Now, for his claim about the popular vote count. The voters went into the polling booths and caucuses knowing what they were voting for; the selection of elected delegates. They were under no illusions that they were entering into a cumulative nation wide popular vote contest. To try and change the meaning of what all those people were voting for, after the fact, would be to spit in the face of those who voted to select delgates to cast their proxy votes at the national convention.

The key point is this:

The rules are that most delegates wins. The entire campaign strategy would shift if it were pure popular vote. Everyone would campaign in CA, NY, TX, FL, and a handful of other states from day one, and completely ignore the small states. The nomination process uses delegates for the same reason that the national election uses electoral votes -- because we have 50 States in our Union, and the president shouldn't be chosen by a handful of population centers. Furthermore, just ask Al Gore: since November isn't about the popular vote but rather an electoral system that gives the smaller states greater weight, the way to get the strongest candidate for November is to choose someone who has a true nationwide following.

Smarter than a 5th Grader
______________________
I ask for your help in stopping the spread of the popular vote myth throughout the media for the Democratic nomination. Many TV, radio and newspaper, and internet blogs continue to claim that a valid path for the superdelegates to choose Hillary Clinton is if she wins the so-called popular vote. However, the popular vote should *not* be considered in the discussion (and thus be removed from all conversation, and be disregarded by the superdelegtes) because adding caucus results to primary results is like adding apples and oranges (nevermind that it's not even a part of any of the contest rules!).

Not an apples-to-apples comparison: The popular vote in caucus states inherently under-represents the state's population when compared to that of primary states, because fewer people participate in caucuses. Therefore, we use delegates to 'normalize' these two systems: the number of delegates won is representative of how the state voted, regardless of the system it chooses to select them.

Some 5th grade math: It's like adding 1/4 to 1/2. Before you add 1/4 to 1/2, you have to first create a common demoninator - the delegate is that common demoninator.

Let's take an example: Washington state (which Obama won) vs Oklahoma (which Clinton won). Since Washington State is a relatively populous state, it's awarded 78 delegates. However, since it used caucuses to determine it's delegates, it added very little to Obama's popular vote advantage (+90,000 according to dailykos), despite his winning by a HUGE margin there (53-25 in delegates). Compare that to Clinton's win in Oklahoma, which is about half the size of Washington: She won the popular vote in Oklahoma 55%-31%, though only came away with a 10 delegate advantage (24-14). However, she gained a +100,000 popular vote advantage since it's a primary state and many more people participated than in Washington's caucus.

Eventhough Clinton comes out ahead in the popular vote between these two states (Okla -(minus) Wash = +10,000), I don't think anybody would debate that her Oklahoma win was more significant than Obama's Washington state win (Okla isn't a "big state" afterall!).

I'd love it if all the news programs (and talk shows) stopped trying to use the popular vote to compare these two candidates. We have had this system which has been effective at normalizing these two processes for a very, very, long time, so please focus on the only math that matters: the delegate math!

Of course, the Clinton campaign will continue to push the popular vote question, and dedicate quite a bit of time discussing this myth leading up to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida, since it's the only numbers that they can spin the media into believing, though this is really 5th grade math, and they definitely aren't 'Smarter than a 5th Grader' here.

Please help stop the spread of the popular vote myth and put and end to this.

Come on people, Rendells just BEGGING for help. He knows Hillary is losing and wants to try and make voters THINK its the popular vote that COUNTS(according to the DNC RULES)

They want to stir the pot and remind folks how angry they were when Gore won popular vote but lost because of Florida in 2000.

Don't be Bamboozled.

Besides - I happen to BELIEVE Obama will have that count at the end of the day as he CURRENTLY does by almost a million.

When I was a kid, when I was losing a game, I'd try this, too: "Let's make it two out of three!"

How funny, just last night I posted on this topic:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/the-popular-vote-is-meaningles.php

The gist of it is this: the pledged delegate count is the 'real' popular vote.

(Which means Obama is winning the popular vote 52 to 46%)

People should consider the counterfactual for a moment. Imagine if Clinton had an insurmountable pledged delegate lead right now.

Who thinks serious Party insiders would be coming up with alternative metrics and other hurdles for her to jump over? Declaring that she's unelectable unless she can carry every single state that her opponent currently has a lead in.

Let's be honest about what's going on here. This is the Party machine desperately trying to save its own. It's insiders who won't give up power. And it stinks. We look like some some Third World country where the Jefe has tried and failed to pick his successor and is now resorting to a Council of Guardians or the like.

At least the Republicans had the decency to give up on their machine candidate when it was clear he wasn't going to win the primaries.

Right Ed, except that the nomination is given to the person with the most Delegates.

Now, if you want to try to convince the rest of the supers to vote for Hillary with your fuzzy math, please do so with the knowledge that you will be tearing apart the Democratic party, and not only handing the Presidency to McCain, but several other Republicans for a decade or two to come.

The select delegates are proxy voters select by the voters in their States to go to the national convention and vote according to how they were elected.

The proxy delegates are to represent the will of the voters in each state, and not the will of an amorphous nationally tally.

Ask Rendell the following: How many US Senators are there, how many are from the largest state in the union, and how many are from the smallest state in the union. Get it Rendell. The smallest state has the same weight in the "world's greatest deliberative body" as the largest state, despite the fact that one state's population size dwarf's the other state's.

The founding fathers wanted it that way. Rendell, you are no Thomas Jefferson so STFU you double dealing jerk.

Ed Rendell is a son of a bitch.

One more time ObaFans:
One of the rules and metrics blah blah blah which Obama and HRC compete under says that super delegates are to use their own best judgement in deciding. That is the rule and Obama accepted it. Here he is as guilty of wanting to move the goal posts as is HRC. And that's OK. It is not cheating.

Rendell is putting forth the metrics he thinks should guide the supers in their choices just as Obama has put forward his own metrics, something that neither Rendell nor HRC nor Obama have the ability to impose on the convention.
In fact Obama himself has used popular vote, number of states won, and elected delegate count as arguments that he is all round winner and the supers should support him. HRC agrees with this while including the caveat that Big Blue Primary States should count for more than Little Red Caucus States. There is something to be said for that argument but not very much.

Why are ObaFans in such a tizzy over Rendell's suggesting something that BHO himself has put forward?