What's more, Hertzberg also insists on making a nuanced argument, rather than a simplistic one. He allows for the fact that the popular vote does carry some weight as a metric with Democrats, and possibly even super-delegates, suggesting that its significance can't be completely dismissed.

How?

When Hertzberg himself acknowledges 6 different ways this so called Popular Vote can be tabulated, the only way it retains significance is through some kind of mythical thinking.

And it's physically and psychologically impossible for a human being to simultaneously hold two ideas that conflict at once UNLESS that human being is a Buddha. Try it sometime - see if you can really concentrate on two things at once. You can't.

no room for sane discussion here. hillary is evil. we must have her head on a stick. those are the rules.

A great piece and thanks for flagging it. Personally, I think the most relevant line is the last one:

In 2000, the candidate most willing to deploy principles and trash them, according to the tactical needs of the moment, was awarded the prize. In 2008, maybe not.

Definitely not!

That, to me, is the point. Yes, the nominating system is royally screwed up. And every year, it seems to be getting worse.

Fortunately, this year, the candidate who played by the rules and stuck to them every step of the way won. It's a shame the candidate who lost keeps trying to rewrite them in midstream and continually changes her position to fit the "needs of the moment."

There can be no doubt that if the candidates' positions were reversed, Hillary would be trumpeting that she played by the rules, won fair and square, and should would also be trying to deny the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations (as Harold Ickes himself voted originally). And there is no doubt in my mind -- though admittedly, the point can be debated -- that Obama would not be moaning and whining, "if only this and if only that" -- he'd either have dropped out or would be campaigning only in a positive way to avoid undermining her chances in the general.

Between now and 2012, the Denocratic Party should undertake a concerted, open and unbiased effort to create a new nominating system that is more rational and reasonable. In the meantime, Hillary needs to suck it up, start acting like a grownup, accept that she lost, and stop undermining the party's chances for unity (and victory) in November.

She didn't get screwed over by the rules. Her campaign simply screwed up. (And Obama ran a masterful campaign.) That's not anyone's problem but her own.

You are absouletly correct about Fitzgerald, Greg. People do it more than they'd like to admit, especially in politics.

he ... makes the perfectly legitimate suggestion that our screwed up nominating system -- in addition to Hillary's gaming of it -- is also to blame for the current state of the political conversation.

The nomination process and its lack of clarity doesn't help, but I think the discord would be there in any event. The advantage of a clearer system would be that it would make it harder for candidates to appear to be viable.

Under the present system, the superdelegates (and, in some interpretations, even pledged delegates) are free to vote their conscience based on whatever they think is reasonable. Having such a large block of people who can choose based on whatever arguments they find most convincing has encouraged more strained arguments about what should really matter in the process. In the end, it's still simply a delegate count.

Nothing else matters, except to the extent that it can convince a superdelegate to support you. Frankly, I'd be happier with both sides if they simply admitted this, rather than pushing arguments that the popular vote (by standard X or Y) should count more, or that superdelegates should vote how their constituents voted, or any other idea that's been floated. Superdelegates are free to vote how they choose, and the two campaigns need to appeal to enough superdelegates to get the nomination.

There are NO rational discussions regarding this race as long as the Senator from New York is still in this long seeminlgy endless Bataan Death March to the nomination..... (Yes, I stole that from the Daily Show).

Greg - a word of advice from tsomeone who's experienced throwing chum into the water

Brody: You're gonna need a bigger boat

Oh I get it...a Black Man has won the most pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination so something MUST BE WRONG. The system isn't broken until it stops doing its job of limiting opportunity and competition.

Give it a rest already, Hillary LOST despite every advantage imaginable...get over it.

Look, the primaries are not governmental functions of the federal system - nor should they be.

Think about it. One party is always in charge - do you want them running our primary if it's the Republicans, as now?

I don't.

Not to be confused with Orwell's principle, which takes it one step farther and accepts those two ideas.

I think a lot of this argument is irrelevant simply because the rules are the rules. They were agreed to by all participants beforehand, and should, nay, MUST, be held to. I agree the nominating and election systems are terrible excuses for a "democracy" such as ours, but what would be even less fair than delegates and electoral votes is changing the rules in the middle of the game. Hillary is right every time she says the rules are unfair, but she is wrong every time she suggests they should be changed mid-stream. It is simply a matter of principle: only DELEGATES count. Not the popular vote. As the guy above alluded to, caucuses exist because the popular vote is irrelevant in this current system.

Bottom line: Yes, the system is screwed up; yes, it needs changing; no, the rules should not be changed before the election is over.

That's my bottom line as well.

I've been going on and on about it.

I have an underlying fear about all this that has to do with how very badly rules and laws have been bent, discarded as inconvient, and redefined constantly by the Republicans.

I don't like it because you do that enough and there is no more Rule of Law - rules no longer matter except to the extent they can be changed or ignored.

I don't like it. We have big problems that stem from this attitude right now.

inconvenient

We Democrats have a general election campaign to run, and the continued obsession with these endless debates about popular votes, pledged delegates, superdelegates, cacuses, party rules and schedules, is a miserable waste of our energies and drain on our morale. Let's get over it and on with it. What are we waiting for?

I'm still disappointed that Hertzberg doesn't distinguish between the Democratic nomination and the general election in regards to the "popular vote."

Although popular vote totals don't have official significance in the GE, they still accurately represent voters' choices relative to one another. Because of that, it can be validly argued whether giving the Electoral College the ultimate decision really makes sense or not.

The Democratic nomination is different in that each state is relatively free to choose which selection system is best for them, which results in a heterogeneous collection of voting methods. It makes absolutely no sense to add the results of a regular primary, which takes maybe 15 minutes of a person's time, to those of a caucus, which may take several hours of a person's time. Caucus participation is a small fraction of primary participation for that very reason. To add the caucus and primary results together, even if all the actual caucus votes were released, would severely penalize the caucus states in respect to the primary states. (If the nomination rules were changed to only validate the popular vote as the nomination selection method, you can be certain that every current caucus state would immediately switch to a primary system!)

"We Democrats have a general election campaign to run, and the continued obsession with these endless debates about popular votes, pledged delegates, superdelegates, cacuses, party rules and schedules, is a miserable waste of our energies and drain on our morale. Let's get over it and on with it. What are we waiting for?"

May 31.

1) Delegate representation is a better metric because it allows extra weight to be given to voters that are truly going to vote for the Democratic candidate. That has the benefit of somewhat negating the Rush Limbaugh effect. If you traditionally vote Republican then your vote should and does could less than someone who is likely to vote Democratic.

2) An accurate measure of the voter sentiment at the time can't be achieved. Voter's behavior was affected by the fact that officially the vote did not count. That is like holding a Coke vs Pepsi challenge, switching the soda with colored water, but keeping labels intact, then using the results to claim victory for your side.

3) Even worse than #2, one of the labels wasn't even on the bottle in one of the events. There is simply no meaningful data to be had.

4) Obama did not campaign in either Florida or Michigan. Even if an accurate measure of the voter sentiment at the time could be achieved it would still be false. Hillary's name recognition from being the former first lady would artificially boosted her count.

I'm all for sane discussion of the primary system. However, I don't believe that discussion is possible when it is being initiated and carried out by the most desperate and angry vocal partisans on the losing end of a primary battle.

I just wish Hillary supporters would honestly acknowledge that they would not be bleating about the importance of the popular vote if they had wrapped up the delegate counts on Super Tuesday nearly 4 months ago. As it is, these cries about the supposed 'unfairness' of the current system sound more like sour grapes than an earnest interest in correcting its problems.

Behind all this discussion of popular vote and how to count it and does it matter, etc, is the plain fact, yes fact, that if by some miracle Clinton manages to convince enough super delegates to abandon Obama and give her the nomination, she will have overruled the pledged delegate results.

A month ago people looked at this scenario as inconceivable, yet somehow it is now being ignored now with all this popular vote nonsense. Clinton campaign reps never directly answer this question, but plainly that is their strategy. Why not discuss that?

As Chris Rock plainly put it, nobody ever heard of a super delegate until it looked like a black man might be president.

There's no question that the Democratic nomination process is lacking in consistency and transparency. I happen to agree with some of the points that the Clinton campaign has raised regarding the tendency for caucuses to favor activists for example. I don't see any contradiction between noting these flaws and accepting the legitimacy of the process for this particular election.

Flawed as the process may be, the idea of changing the metrics midstream is bizarre, at best. It would involve at best extrapolation ("well, we figure this is what the vote would be in this caucus state if it were a primary"). It would also be impossible to conduct with any sort of objectivity at this time. Finally, it would be unfair to the strategists on either campaign to change the goalposts after they've executed their strategies.

All in all, following the stated rules is by far the most fair and legitimate way to choose a nominee, in this campaign. Had either candidate protested the rules at the start, or indicated that he or she was following them under duress, I might have some sympathy to complaints. But in fact both Clinton and Obama were happy to start the contest under the official rules.

Now here's where I think Senator Clinton is crossing the line. She's free to make any argument she wants to the superdelegates. But in publicly challenging the legitimacy of the nominating process, she risks unfairly damaging not only Senator Obama but the party as a whole, if she creates an impression that the Democrats do not work democratically. We all need to keep our tempers at this stage in the campaign, but I have to say that this is starting to really annoy me.

I'll assume TPM readers have noticed how Billary's "popular vote" argument is nothing more than a sleazy attempt to leave a bad (and false) taste of "this nomination was stolen from her!" in the mouths of Hillary's white women voters, and thus to make sure many of them stay home in November.
The stupidity and gut-less-ness of the Democratic Party never ceases to amaze me--it's long past time to bitch-slap Billary and their increasingly creepy campaign, with its hints of assassination, off the stage.

Popular vote, schmopular vote. There's a reason that the Founding Fathers put so many bulwarks against democratic expression in the Constitution--they saw popular passion as incompatible with the considered deliberation that's necessary for effective governance.

The way to change the process is for the DNC to assign percentages to various blocks of time before the convention, and then apply those percentages to the delegate counts that come out of the various primaries and caucuses. For example, if you hold your primary before Feb 1st you get 0% of your delegates. Feb 1st-Feb 14th might get you 20% of your delegates, 15th-29th gets you 40%, and so forth, with a max percentage of 120% after three months. (The percentages and schedule are completely off the top of my head). Maybe you have an extra-wide window at 100%.

Each state can then decide how influential it wants to be at the convention vs. how influential it wants to be in the campaign.

In all this discussion, just so we don't lose track of what's truly important, here's the current delegate count by percentage:

Obama 52.6%
Clinton 47.4%

Obama is winning by 5.2%

Apparently by RealClearPolitics tortured metrics the only way Obama comes out ahead is if FL and MI are not included.

The tortured metrics either don't include all states, or don't include MI, or don't included estimates for caucus states, are the ones that have Obama in front. Tortured methodolgies for sure.

The cleanest methods, the ones that include all states, both have Clinton ahead.

Case closed.

Clinton leads in the popular vote.

Pardon me if it's been said before but...
All nominees entered into this contest under the same rules, under the same nominating system.
If any of the nominees thought the system was dumb or gave some unfair advantage to any of the other candidates, they've had plenty of time to express those views and push to change the process welll before the primaries. Given the weight the Clintons are able to throw around in Dem circles, HRC, could have easily pushed for a rule change PRIOR to this contest. She didn't. No one else did.
They all understood (or should understand) how the nominating process works. If not, they have no business running for the nomination nor should they hold office.
Blaming the system in any way for Clinton's losing (or any of the other candidates dropping out for that matter) is disingenuous to say the least. It suggest that the rules were tailor made for someone other than the loser and I don't think that's true since the rules were in place before Obama even came on to the national scene.
The rules can only favor a certain strategy. The candidates can use whatever strategy they want. Obama's team picked a winning strategy and the Clinton team was too arrogant and complacent to bother with picking a strategy at all.
They got caught with their pants down.
It was a chess match and HRC was playing checkers...

The purpose of the nominating process is to pick a person who will win in November. That was also the purpose of the Supers. To make sure that will really happen. I fear the process is broken because getting someone nominated is more important than winning in November.

I also think looking at overall polls for the country is foolish. What matters is a state by state comparision. The general election is not a caucus, it is a process where most states are winner take all. So a state by state comparision is all that really matters. Not who can got the most dem votes in the primaries.

If you cannot find a way to win the election using the current system, which is state by state, pick another person. That is the job of the supers. Do your job.

I fail to see how we have a "screwed up nominating system." The rules were clear. Everyone agreed to them. All that's screwed up now is Hillary's regret that she ever agreed to these rules in the first place. It is impossible to say what the true popular vote was, since there were primaries, caucuses, and primaries that weren't supposed to count. Sure, superdelegates are interested in the popular vote. They are also are rightly interested in polls and an assessment of the electoral college. The best argument the Clinton people can make is that it has been very, very close. That's not good enough to take a win from the person who played by the rules and won.

I wonder what the McCain/Clinton numbers would look like if the superdelegates gave Clinton the nomination over Obama? Do any of her supporters think that she would win with say a 50 to 65% reduction in votes from African Americans? With maybe 10 to 20% of the Starbucks drinking liberals and college kids looking real hard at the Green party or Nader?

Right now, Hillary's numbers don't reflect the backlash from Obama not getting the nomination. But Obama's numbers most definitely reflect the backlash since it has been obvious for a while now that he is the presumptive nominee.

Heck, right now if polled I'd answer that I would vote for Hillary over McCain. But I'm not furious yet. Ask me after Obama has the nomination taken from him and my guess is you'd get a different answer.

I agree with the discussion that the popular vote makes a difference only insofar as it moves the superdelegates. The popular vote might be important to the superdelegates for two reasons (that I can imagine):

1) It reflects electability
2) It offers legitimacy

The popular vote totals of both candidates are so close that 1) is a wash. The Democratic electorate is almost evenly split. Other factors, like demographic appeal, campaign organization, fundraising, etc. should be considered much more significantly in gaging electability.

2) is a tricky one. Legitimacy is a construct, meaning that it has to do with perceptions. No candidate deserves to win an election in any absolute sense outside people's perceptions of just deserts. Americans, in particular, tend to believe that legitimacy is conferred by the one-person, one-vote principle. Never mind that our electoral systems only approximate the principle and that in a very close race, it is practically speaking impossible, even with a coherent voting system, to honor the principle completely. If a case can be made that the loser of a race has won the popular vote by even one vote, the loser's supporters will feel that their candidate was robbed of a rightful victory. But there is a conflict because many Americans also believe that electoral rules confer legitimacy. When those standards of legitimacy conflict, chaos is bound to ensue.

The Democratic Party doesn't want chaos, and it's important that the nominee be perceived to be widely legitimate, or millions of voters will be angry and alienated. That's why Clinton is arguing so strenuously that she has won the popular vote. It's a claim to legitimacy. She is simultaneously trying to count MI & FL in order to undercut Obama's claim to legitimacy via the rules for apportioning pledged delegates.

If she had a clear popular mandate, there might be something to her claim, but then the superdelegates and the party would be forced to navigate conflicting standards of legitimacy: the rules (pledged delegates) and the popular vote. Fortunately for the party, Clinton's claim to the popular vote is so strained that it cannot lead to a widespread perception of legitimacy, leaving Obama with a clear win in terms of pledged delegates and a more widely accepted win in terms of the popular vote. Indeed, Obama's claim to legitimacy is so strong that were Clinton to somehow succeed in persuading enough superdelegates to give her the nomination, there would likely be massive outrage and alienation of Obama supporters, who would perceive Obama to have been robbed of a rightful nomination.

One might contend that the superdelegates are part of the process. Therefore, their votes confer legitimacy on whomever is selected. That's true to an extent, but for better or for worse, superdelegates are not perceived to offer the same level of legitimacy as pledged delegates. While technically within the rules, they are at the same time perceived to act as external forces, and I doubt that such arguments would comfort those who would feel alienated by superdelegate-determined nomination of Clinton.

For these reasons, I cannot see a large majority of superdelegates risking the ire of Obama supporters. Clinton's quest to demonstrate legitimacy is therefore hopeless. Worse, it is dangerous for the party. Clinton cannot win the nomination but the better job she does convincing her supporters of her own legitimacy, the more alienated they will feel when she doesn't get the nomination. This will not only hurt Obama's chances but also the chances of all Democratic candidates in Congress and state and local governments if alienated Clinton supporters refuse to go to the polls.

Most people think the popular vote is pretty significant. Interesting.

With Hillary Clinton supporters planning to storm the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting this weekend, the movie "Recount" couldn't have come out at a more opportune time since many such Clinton supporters are intending to enact their own version of Florida's "Brooks Brothers Riot" to intimidate members of the committee.