« previous | TPM CAFÉ READER POSTS HOME | next »
Obama and the so-called Will of the People!
Obama's supporters keep crowing and crowing about having "the will of the people" on their side. They keep threatening that there will be hell to pay if the superdelegates overturn the expressed will of the people. I see self-serving demagoguery at work here and pretty hardball old-style politics of intimidation and an impregnable and delusional sense of absolute entitlement.
How is the will of the people to be measured in this primary campaign and to what extent do pledge delegates adequately represent the will of the people?
First, take the caucuses by means of which Obama has won a large number of his delegates. The caucuses themselves are incredibly anti-democratic and are very poor reflections of the will of the democratic electorate at large. We have two concrete proofs of that. First, take Texas and its absurd two step. A democratic election held during the daylight hours, was basically partially reversed by an undemocratic procedure at night. Which is a better representation of "the will of the people?" The primary Obama lost or the Caucus he won? Similarly compare the Washington State Caucus with the barely covered Washington State Primary. THe primary was very close, as I recall, something like 52 - 48 for Obama. But Obama won the Caucus overwhelmingly. Again, which better represents the will of the people?
Focus next on the fact that many of Obama's wins came in states that we Democrats unfortunately have NO chance of carrying any time soon. For the superdelegates to be cowed by threats and intimidation into awarding the nomination to Obama because he won states we can't win and loses states that we must win would be the height of self-defeating absurdity and cowardice.
And then there is the delicate matter of Florida and Michigan and with it the utter bitter irony of a campaign that pretends (and only pretends) to be the high-minded spokesman of the will of the people actually doing everything it can to prevent the voices of the good people of Florida and Michigan from being heard and counted. If Obamaniacs cared so much for the will of the people, they would stop standing in the way of counting the votes of Florida and Michigan. Instead, they crow endlessly about "the rules! the rules! the rules!" to justify disenfranchising millions, to justify undemocratic unrepresentative caucuses and then they claim to stand for "the will of the people?"
Finally, it's pretty clear that DEMOCRATS prefer Hillary to Obama. Obama needs open primaries and a flood of independents and repugnants to prevail. Open primaries may or may not have their place in our total system. But they cannot lay any particular claim to represent the will of the democratic electorate. I think the democratic nominee should really be decided by democratics. Don't you?
All in all the constant refrain that "the will of the people" should not be overturned amounts to little more than disingenuous, self-serving demagoguery.
Comments (14)
I agree with all of your points.
The rules must only be followed when the outcome benefits Hillary.
"The will of the people" must only be followed when the outcome benefits Hillary.
Wins in GOP-voting states only count when Hillary wins them.
And most importantly, we will now refer to Democrats as "Democratics" -- it sounds much cooler!
Thinkingman is the perfect name for you. Your analysis shows amazing foresight and thought.
March 24, 2008 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
last checked the people in florida and michigan ELECTED the idiots who, in florida, voted almost unanimously, and overwhelmingly in michigan, to move up their primary despite being repeatedly warned for well over a month that they would lose their delegates.
hillary signed the DNC's pledge to punish these states, and reaffirmed her pledge in radio interviews - only changing her "principles" on the issue after she realized she had lost the nomination.
clinton supporters, who live in some magical state of denial, flat out refuse to acknowledge that the only way clinton can win this nomination is to make all the previous votes moot by tossing the results of those primaries out.
they continue to pretend that obama wouldn't ALSO beat mc cain in the few states hillary's camp won says are so vital, even in the face of recent polls which actually show obama beating mc cain by MORE POINTS THAN HILLARY WOULD in some of the states she's won - like california!
this "head buried in the sand" approach might work for SOME hillary supporters, probably the same ones who think it's wise to destroy the party, but the numbers in california suggest that hillary's "do ANYTHING to win - including destroying the party" is creating a backlash. it's a classic example of winning a battle and losing a war - and of some democrats' willingness to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
personally, i wish these short-sighted divisive democrats would leave the party if they don't have any more brains than that. i think if they don't have the smarts that god gave a goose, they should align themselves with other notoriously famous losers... nader would probably love getting the hatred off HIS back, i'm sure, and might consider hillary as a running mate.
if you think hillary over-turning the results of the majority of primary elections isn't going to crack the party in half, it's just further evidence of how completely deluded, and how deep in denial, you all are.
March 24, 2008 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You do a disservice to your candidate.
You perpetuate the view many hold (since the 1990s) that she will do anything to win.
You perpetuate the view many hold (since the 1990s) that the rules have to conform to her desires, not vice versa.
You perpetuate the view many hold (since the 1990s) that Clinton has a 15 state strategy that her husband rode to democratic losses in Senate, house, governorships, state legislatures during his term as President.
You perpetuate the view many hold (since the 1990s) that Clinton adopts contrary positions depending on the day of the week and the triangulations of her advisor (she supported the DNC position on Florida and Michigan until she was not the runaway nominee).
In essence you perpetuate the view that leads so many to vote against her and for someone else.
I for one thank you for your post on behalf of Obama supporters everywhere. But I suggest you might actually out a little more thought into framing your arguments if you are trying to convince anyone to vote for her.
March 24, 2008 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thinkingman --I wonder how it is that you are appalled at the Michigan and Florida results not counting, saying they are disenfranchising millions. Yet, you say that caucus states shouldn't count, nor should votes from states that are strongly Republican. Is that not disenfranchising more people?
Apparently you do not think my vote for HRC should count, because I live in the very red state of Georgia, and I am an independent. I also think that you need to rephrase your Democrat prefer Hillary. I believe that is only true when you say "white Democratics".
This is the area that I find Hillary supporters, which I consider myself to be, the most unsupportable. The Democratic process for nomination has always included open/closed primaries and caucuses, and has always included all states, not just those who voted Democrat in the last election. The process was clearly understood by all candidates before it started. Agree with it or not, the person that wins the nomination should be based on the winner of the nomination process, as it was at the beginning of the election. Anything else is absurd.
March 24, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't say that Caucuses shouldn't count or that open primaries shouldn't count. Count it all. But don't pretend that what's being measured in the counting is "the will of the people."
It's a complex, multifaceted system for securing delegates. But a delegate is really just a delegate no matter how chosen. The superdelegates are just more delegates chosen in a different way.
Some of the ways of choosing delegates are highly democratic; others are less so.
My only claim was that to pretend that having a majority of the pledge delegates makes one candidate more of a spokesman for "the will of the people" isn't very plausible, since some of those ways of chosing them are undemocratic in the extreme.
The argument at this point shouldn't really be about the abstract and not really determinable "will of the people" but about who is best positioned to win the election in the fall -- since neither candidate will have a majority of delegates by the time the convention comes around. The convention is usually just a rubber stamp of the outcome of the primary, but will be so much more this time around. It could actually involve collective deliberation among the delegates about the best path forward.
Obama and his supporters and enablers want to short-circuit the very possibility of any such deliberation happening by disingenuous rhetoric about the "will of the people."
That's my point.
March 24, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thinkingman, maybe if you think a little longer and a little harder, you'll be able to think up some metric by which Hillary wins the nomination.
Of course, I can't top what Josh has to say on the matter.
March 24, 2008 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you new to politics? Just wondering.
March 24, 2008 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I voted (for Obama) in the Washington caucuses, where the turnout was extraordinarily high -- roughly double what it was in 2004, and maybe 8 times what it was in 1988.
Like most Washington Democrats, I didn't bother to vote in our state's "primary", which was well understood by all to be a meaningless "beauty contest".
Now you want to change the rules, and count our primary instead of our "undemocratic" caucus? Just like Michigan and Florida, you want to retroactively recognize another contest that everyone at the time agreed wouldn't count. And exactly why is that again?
March 24, 2008 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you missed my point. I wasn't arguing that delegates should be awarded on the basis of the primary in Washington State rather than the Caucus.
I was just asking which was more representative of "the will of the people." Nothing about changing the rules. It was about challenging the rhetorical argument mounted by Obama and his enablers and supporters.
March 24, 2008 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I understand you well enough. Whether it is for delegate allocation purposes, as in FL and MI, or for more nebulous superdelegate "moral suasion" purposes, as here in WA, you want to recognize the results of contests that every informed voter understood were meaningless. In the case of WA, you haven't presented even a shred of evidence that more people voted in my state's beauty contest primary than in our Saturday-afternoon caucuses!
March 24, 2008 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nearly 700,000 voters turned out in the Washington State democratic primary.
Don't know how many registered democrats there are there. But I would guess that's a pretty hefty % of them.
http://vote.wa.gov/elections/wei/results.aspx?ElectionID=3
March 24, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, more people voted in WA's beauty contest Democratic primary (which, as you say, Obama also "won") than in our caucuses, where the estimated turnout was 200,000.
Nevertheless. I'm an informed Washington voter. If I knew that the primary might be used to measure "the will of the people," I might have turned out. Caucus voters like me cared enough to show up at the one contest that we were all told mattered.
March 24, 2008 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are two points on this "will of the people" argument that keeps getting made. One is that it's hard to tell what the will of the people is, but the threshold question is whether we care.
On the first point, Thinkingman has it dead on. The will of the people is not well represented by delegates (or even popular vote) for many reasons.
In fact there's a margin of error built in to the process. Anyone who secures 62% of the pledged delegates is deemed to have won beyond that margin of error and no amount of uniformity in dissent by superdelegates matters. Below that threshold, we don't know with any certainty what the will of the people is; it's too close to call.
For decades the Democratic convention had a 2/3 requirement to determine the nomination. This current system is decidedly easier. We already have a way of sorting out who the nominee is if no one gets the supermajority: The convention is a tie-breaker, including the superdelegates. And I consider closer than that 62% threshold to be a statistical tie considering all the primary and caucus problems listed. It's still going to be over on the first ballot and both campaigns can start going after McCain after the primaries are over in June.
The other point is whether we should care. Nomination is a party process, not a governmental process. If you don't like it, become active to change them for next time or start your own party with whatever rules you like. We weren't supposed to have parties to begin with, and the nomination in our (awful) two-party system is being viewed too much like an official national semi-final where people think they have some strict democratic protection. This is not an official process any more than Ralph Nader deciding to run for President at his kitchen table over coffee. They're offering lots of democracy by letting people participate at all; it's hardly required and is a relatively new consideration in American politics.
March 24, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is quite misleading on at least two counts. First, the last time the Democrats used the "2/3 rule" was 1932 -- several political lifetimes ago.
Second, the Democratic Convention, when the superdelegates will effectively decide this, is not in June. It is in late August.
Finally, in what universe is a 62%-to-38% margin of victory considered "a statistical tie"? Besides Arkansas, has Hillary Clinton "won" a single contest by this bizarre standard?
March 24, 2008 4:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Post a Comment