I’m definitely not saying there are only two issues that matter. There are hundreds of issues that matter.
But for most of those issues — including most of the issues I’m personally passionate about — it probably won’t make a difference if the nominee is Obama or Clinton.
Take health care. Clinton’s proposal is clearly, albeit marginally, better than Obama’s. But that’s not an important difference, because neither Obama or Clinton expect to have their exact proposals put into law. The law will be written in Congress and brought to the President to sign, based on what can be gotten through the Senate (which will not have enough Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster, so nothing will get passed without a handful of Republicans agreeing to it). Ron Wyden — who is the leading Democratic Senator on Health Care, and who has quietly gotten a handful of Republicans to sign on to his Health Care plan — will probably have more to do with the details of the eventual health care reform than either Clinton or Obama will.
I’m not saying that health care is unimportant — on the contrary, it’s essential, and an issue that effects me personally. What I’m saying is that the relatively minor differences between Clinton’s and Obama’s health care plans probably won’t matter much for what actually happens, because on domestic policy the President’s powers are severely constrained by politics. When push comes to shove, what will matter is getting enough Senators to sign on to a plan — and either Obama or Clinton will go with the plan that they can get through the Senate, not the plan they talked about during the primaries.
The President certainly has a broad effect on what policies pass, which is why the broad differences do matter. The broad differences between Clinton and McCain, say, or between Obama and McCain. But when it comes down to actual policy, the differences between Clinton and Obama are narrow and likely to be washed out completely in the give and take of negotiating actual legislation.
What’s true of Health Care is true of domestic issues generally; it just doesn’t matter much if Obama or Clinton is in the White House, because the relatively subtle differences in policy or language choice Obama and Clinton supporters argue about won’t translate into differences in real law and real policy. Look at another couple of examples:
- Both of them will choose reliably pro-choice Supreme Court justices ((I’ve heard more than one Clinton-supporter argue that we can’t rely on Obama to appoint pro-choice justices. That’s not true; even if Obama is secretly pro-life, and there’s no reason to think he is, it would be political suicide for him to attack the Democratic base by appointing an anti-choice justice.)) ; neither of them will choose Supreme Court justices who will reverse the Court’s bias in favor of business over labor. Even if either of them secretly wants to appoint a real leftist to the Court, the Republicans would filibuster, so forget that.
- Both of them are committed to trying to overturn DOMA — although Obama favors a full repeal, whereas Clinton favors a partial repeal (leaving a bit in as a hedge against an anti-gay constitutional amendment). It’s an interesting argument, from a wonky point of view, but in practice it’s doubtful 60 senators would agree to overturn DOMA in part or in whole.
These are issues I care a lot about — these are issues, in fact, of central importance to me. But they don’t provide a strong reason to vote for Clinton over Obama, or vice versa, because the outcome will be pretty much the same under either President. ((It’s also true that the President, through issuing rules, staffing choices, etc.., can make some domestic decisions without Congress’ say-so. But none of these are areas where I’ve seen evidence of a significant policy disparity between Clinton and Obama on any major issues, except perhaps “open government” issues.))
What about sending a message that bigotry is not acceptable in a Democratic Presidential candidate?
I have a great deal of sympathy for this argument, and I would never say that this is not an issue that matters. We’d all be better off if future Democratic candidates learned that appeals to racism, sexism, and homophobia are a sure route to losing a primary. Even if it meant losing the 2008 election, it might be worth it if a clear message could be sent.
Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to send a clear anti-bigotry message this election, because there’s no clean candidate to vote for. Barack Obama’s people have undeniably made appeals to sexism during this election, and arguably so has Obama himself. Moreover, Obama allowed a outspokenly homophobic gospel singer to headline multiple fundraisers.
But what’s the alternative? The Clinton campaign has consistently brought race into the campaign, from the unsubtle whites-are-oppressed complaints of Ferrarro to more subtle attempts to make Obama into a Scary Black Man, including Clinton herself struggling to keep the Jeremiah Wright story in the news.
We can’t send a “no bigotry, no way” message with a vote for either of these candidates. Both of them have dirty hands.
The Two Issues
So what are the two issues where the differences between Clinton and Obama are potentially important?
The first, most important issue is who can beat McCain in the general election, because either Clinton or Obama — bad as they are, from a leftist point of view — would be enormously better than McCain. McCain is another four to eight years of failed Bush policies; more needless, avoidable war, more wasted lives, and more economic mismanagement.
The trouble is, although both sides play with math semi-persuasively (“only large states count!” “No, only swings!” “No, only Reagan Democrats!” “look at the fundraising!” blah blah blah), there’s no way we can know or even reasonably guess who will beat McCain by the larger margin, because we don’t get to run the general election twice.
Furthermore, arguments based on “electability” don’t have a good track record; remember when all the smart number-crunchers said we had to support John Kerry because he was “electable”? But in practice, Kerry let the Republican machine walk all over him. Deciding between the two candidates on the basis of “electibility” is problematic at best, guesswork at worst. Plus, by some weird coincidence, Obama’s partisans all look at the math and find out that Obama has the best shot of beating McCain, while Clinton’s partisans find the exact opposite.
In the end, the most logical way to decide which candidate is most able to win a national election is to create some sort of mock national election (we can call it something else, like a “primaride”), in which both candidates have to fight for votes nationwide in a vicious campaign run according to arbitrary rules while a vapid media looks for any shallow, stupid story to report on. It’s not a perfect solution, but I can’t think of a better method of settling the “electability” question.
The second issue that matters is foreign policy. Unlike domestic policy, Presidents have a great deal of control over foreign policy, even down to fine details. The president controls the military, after all. And even in other areas, congress has long deferred to the President for the details of our foreign policy, and that deference is greater than ever after eight years of Bush.
Because of this Presidential control over small details, even the small differences between Obama and Clinton on foreign policy are much more likely to matter than small differences on domestic policies.
In my next post in this series, I’ll argue that Obama — who is no progressive — nonetheless has an approach to foreign policy that is significantly better than Clinton’s, from a progressive point of view.
Why is it that when the Democrats filibuster, it only manages to delay the inevitable, while when there is the threat of a Republican filibuster, it’s treated as a trump card that guarantees that they’ll get their way?
Does it have something to do with many of our Democratic senators being spineless wimps?
Further proof that Amp might want to consider law school. Very logical and well supported reasoning. I would add one further distinction between Obama and Clinton, which is not electability per se, but actively trying to broaden the base of the Democratic party by organizing in every state. This is a long term strategy and Obama deserves enormous credit for undertaking it, even if he did it out of a sense of competitive opportunism. I am truly staggered that Clinton really had no party operations in numerous states, which means that, if she were the candidate, during the GE campaign, there will be no presidential resources allocated to helping down ticket candidates. The bigger the House and Senate margins are, the more likely it is that threats of filibuster by Rs can be contained if not eliminated. I think this is a bona fide reason to prefer Obama over Clinton.
Wow.
Thank you so much for this essay. Maybe it’s my choice of blogs, but I have had a hard time finding a real pro-Obama argument that doesn’t also include some real venom directed at Clinton.
There may be several sites where I could find this, but I discontinued visiting blogs where the Hillary Hatred was so prevalent.
Hey! You have good reasons to support Obama.
This is a breath of fresh air for me.
Another pragmatic reason to support Obama over Clinton: a legitimate Obama victory may disappoint many supporters of the “first woman President” concept, but I doubt those supporters will withdraw their energy, money, and votes in the general election campaign. A legitimate Clinton victory is likely to cause a major demotivation in the black community, which is the vote bloc that Democrats MUST own in its entirety to win.
Illegitimate victories (i.e. any that seemed counter to the will of the primary electorate) would strengthen those trends – there would be more demotivation on both sides, but the additional demotivation in the black vote would be enormous.
In addition, Obama is proof against the cunning plan that McCain has in the wings. If Clinton wins the nomination, I 75-95% guarantee you that McCain will pick Condoleeza Rice, JC Watts, Colin Powell, or some similar conservative black, as his vice president, and that will destroy the Democratic lock on the black vote, probably forever. That won’t work against Obama; you can’t beat single malt whiskey with beer. So Obama is the better pick from the game-theory aspect of shutting down your opponent’s best gambits.
“Ron Wyden — who is the leading Democratic Senator on Health Care, and who has quietly gotten a handful of Republicans to sign on to his Health Care plan — will probably have more to do with the details of the eventual health care reform than either Clinton or Obama will. ”
amp, from a fellow oregonian, thank you thank you thank you for pointing this out.
otherwise, brilliant post.
Robert, both your points read as ‘racism trumps black Democrats’ rationality’.
Duck.
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I’m looking forward to your upcoming posts, all the moreso because foreign policy is one of the areas that I feel uncertain about Obama in. He strikes me as distinctly hawk-like. Especially towards Iran.
Dianne, is there a particular statement or position which Obama has stated which makes you feel he’s hawkier than Clinton, in general or on Iran?
I think it might just.
Barbara, I do think that’s a very good argument (although it’s not the argument I happen to be making).
is there a particular statement or position which Obama has stated which makes you feel he’s hawkier than Clinton, in general or on Iran?
This sort of statement makes me worry that he is at least as hawkish as Clinton. Of course, Clinton has said similar things, so I don’t think that there is a case to be made for Obama being more hawkish than Clinton, just not necessarily less. In short, I tend to think that their foreign policies are likely to be identical or nearly so. But that’s why I want to read your upcoming posts: I haven’t been paying much attention since the primary is done in my state and may have missed something critical.
I’m also much less certain than you are about domestic issues. I’d like to see Clinton try for health care reform again. Maybe I’m overoptimistic, but I think that the time is right. Most Americans are disgusted with the current system–including virtually all doctors and hospital administrators. And health care reform actually did occur during Bill’s administration–the S-CHIP program was a rousing success both in terms of improving poor children’s health and decreasing government spending on healthcare for children (fewer ER visits.) Opposing it was one of the many acts of pure evil of the Bush administration. True, it is Congress that would draft the law and have control over the details. But an interested president who is pressing for health care reform could influence Congress to actually get it done. With an indifferent president, I don’t think it’ll happen. Though we might get an expansion of S-CHIP or something similar, which would be great, but not enough.
Alison Bechdal on Obama versus Clinton. I particularly like the “He’s a Mac, she’s a PC” argument.
Oh, thank you for that link, Dianne — that cartoon is perfect.
FWIW, I think that Hillary Clinton would have an easier time with health care reform than she did the last time, and so would Obama, mostly because Congress has changed. A very astute observer, IMO, noted that one thing that Bill Clinton faced was a Congress that thought it didn’t need him to preserve its own prerogatives, an attitude that has definitely changed since 1994. Now, a Democratic Congress is much more likely to concern itself with helping a Democratic president make positive achievements. It was, after all, a Democratic Congress that defeated Hillary’s plan the first time around. (And FWIW, her plan was ill-conceived and not well-enough debated.)
The change will make a world of difference, but I think that’s true no matter which one of them is elected.
Dianne:
I don’t think the pressure for real health care reform is coming from the President (well, obviously it isn’t right now, but you know what I mean). It’s coming from the general public. As far as legislation goes, the people really driving it in Congress aren’t any of the people running for president (one could make an argument for Edwards on this basis, were he still in the race).
A President Obama, like President (Bill) Clinton before him, will be under a lot of pressure to make good on campaign promises in his first year, and there will be real pressure on this from people like Wyden and Edwards in the Senate. (And perhaps Clinton, too.) I don’t think he can afford to be “indifferent” to the issue.
What I see as a real danger to health care is not Obama instead of Clinton (even though Obama is less focused on this issue), but that the tide will turn against it if the economy sours and the “we just can’t afford this in the middle of a recession” argument gains traction, bleeding votes and support in the Senate (and in the public).
I’ve been interested in this particular argument myself — and, I can see the value and legitimacy in it. I’m just not sure that it has (or will) be as effective as people would like to think. The fact is, despite his efforts here, and despite his success in getting new and formerly disenchanted voters out to the polls, the results show that Obama voters have been significantly less likely to vote downticket than Clinton voters.
On a different subject, I do believe that Clinton’s experience with not getting her original health care bill put through has given her a learning experience (one in which I think she did learn from) on how to get the next one through. I do think that on health care reform, she will be significantly stronger and more likely to get a useful bill through.
Ummm…Edwards is no longer in the Senate.
For what I’ve seen, and I’ve been following the election somewhat closely, I think the Clinton campaign used racism twice (that I saw) 1. Ferraro 2. Bill comparing Obama’s win in South Carolina to the Jesse Jackson campaign.
There have been several (debatably) phony claims of racism by some of Obama’s supporters IMO including 1. the claim by Orlando Patterson that 3 am phone call commercial was suppose to stoke fears about black men. 2. That calling Obama elitist was the same as calling him uppity 3. Hilary’s LBJ comment about civil rights 4. Attacking the good Rev. Wright is racist. 5. the supposed Bradley effect in New Hampshire. 6. If working class whites vote for Clinton it must be racism (see Tim Wise).
I support Obama but I doubt he’ll deliver universal health care or an end to The Iraq war. I believe those things will have to come from movements outside the democratic party.
Eliza said: “the results show that Obama voters have been significantly less likely to vote downticket than Clinton voters.”
what results are you talking about?
Obama’s organization in flyover states is one reason why superDs from those states have not rushed to endorse Clinton. It’s not just that she might not win the state, but it’s increasingly clear that she won’t even bother to run in a lot of states (essentially). Maybe in Wyoming that makes no difference, but where I live, in Virginia, it very well could.
Well, results like these, for example.
I have read about similar results in other states, as well.
I’m inclined to agree, but I’d warn you that “legitimacy” is subjective. Is losing the delegate and popular votes but coming out on top via superdelegates a legitimate victory? Well, it’s within the Democratic Party rules. But it’s never, ever happened before, and if the Black community sees such a major break in precedent coinciding to work against the first major African-American presidential candidate, they’ll cry foul, and I won’t blame them.
Not that such an action by the Democratic Party would be fueled by racism – I’m almost certain it wouldn’t be – but again, legitimacy is subjective.
Also, younger voters may respond the same way, although younger voters aren’t as historically vital to the Democratic Party, and any potential backlash will have weaker long term effects because “young voter” is not a static trait. And of course, there are similar voting blocs for Clinton, but these are more near the “young voter” side of the potential danger spectrum than “AA voter”, in my opinion.
I’m inclined to agree, but I’d warn you that “legitimacy” is subjective. Is losing the delegate and popular votes but coming out on top via superdelegates a legitimate victory? Well, it’s within the Democratic Party rules. But it’s never, ever happened before, and if the Black community sees such a major break in precedent coinciding to work against the first major African-American presidential candidate, they’ll cry foul, and I won’t blame them.
Well, first, this is only the 6th election that “superdelegates” have existed, so “it’s never happened before” does not have that long of a history.
More importantly though, you have to remember that the whole idea of “superdelegates” – a stupid name IMNSHO – is precisely so that they CAN select the candidate in the case that there are two or more closely-placed candidates.
This is an exposition on how this all came to be in the first place. Here’s a statement by the head of the commission that came up with these rules on why this was done:
Rule 11(H) obligated delegates who had been elected on the basis of their support for a given candidate to actually vote for that candidate. In the 1980 Kennedy/Carter primary season, Kennedy went to the convention and tried to overturn that rule.
The whole idea of “superdelegates” was to give control of the choice of the party’s Presidential candidate to those people who had been elected to government under the party’s banner. By this definition, “less than clear” would seem to indicate that the spread between the two candidates is less than the number of elected officials serving as unelected delegates. Apparently a few percentage points is not a clear mandate as far as the Democratic party is concerned.
Now, the electorate may not have had this understanding prior to this point. But as an elected official belonging to the Democratic Party, Barak Obama surely did. So I see his assertion that his colleagues in governmental service are somehow obligated to vote for him if he ekes out a few percentage points’ lead over Hillary Clinton is mendacious. He knows very well what the rules of the game are. He’s trying to manipulate the party and the system, not work within it.
Yes, but whites within political parties (and other large institutions) acting in ways that prevent Black people from getting the leading positions has a long, long history. It’s happened lots of times before.
(Of course, there’s a similar history with women; but no one is proposing that if Clinton has an advantage in delegates, the superdelegates should give it to Obama anyway, so that history isn’t being invoked by the “superdelegates should decide” argument.)
Could you please quote the specific assertion you’re referring to?
If Obama actually said that the superdelegates are obliged to vote for him according to the rules of the game, then he was lying, and you’re quite right.
However, if he (or his spokespeople) merely said that they believe the superdelegates are morally obliged to vote for him because he won more delegates, then that’s just making an argument to persuade superdelegates to vote for him. That’s not dishonest; it’s the way the game is played. It is, in fact, working within the system.
Incidently, what do you think of the Michigan and Florida situation?
Obama presents it as a moral obligation. I think that’s absurd. Again, it’s not as if the superdelegate pool was set up to give a bunch of elected officials a free trip to a convention city and preen in front of the cameras. The whole idea of creating them was to provide a group of votes that was independent of the general electorate and would be free to vote against them. Obama is objectively wrong to represent that they have any obligation to vote for him for any reason other than their own personal opinions of whether or not he’s the party’s best choice. To say that there’s an obligation on their part because the electorate will end up giving him a slim margin is deliberately deceptive from what I can see.
Oh, man – Michigan and Florida. That’s a mess. Obama’s right that since they didn’t play by the party’s rules they shouldn’t have a voice in the party’s decision. There’s a couple of OTOHs, though. First, talk about disenfranchisement. It’s not the fault of the electorate that the governors and legislative leaders got greedy and decided to bump up the primary dates – and it’s ironic that given the way this election has gone, they’d actually have had more clout if they had left the dates the way they were. It also skews the overall results, in that you’ll have two major states left out of deciding a close nomination race that WILL be counted in the general election.
It’s my understanding that those states supported Hillary over Barak. If I’m right, expect her to use Barak’s statements to make a case to the superdelegates that they should support her to balance out the loss of those two states in the balloting process.
I also have to wonder what the exclusion of those states’ delegates will have on the general election. There’s already a lot of talk that some of the losing candidates’ voters might either sit out the general election or vote for McClain (the latter more likely to involve Clinton’s voters than Obama’s). Will not even getting their primary votes counted amplify this effect? That’s a lot of electoral votes in a couple of normally blue states.
I am fresh out of advice on this one. I don’t see any way to resolve it that will be “fair”. A lack of party discipline has served the Democrats quite badly – but then, Will Rogers was right when he said “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
(first comment here at Alas, please forgive if any toes are stepped on — I will also accept yelps and scowls and scoldings in that case ;))
I have to say that I detest the electability arguments. What they always boil down to — who would be a significant-enough voting bloc to make a difference between the two candidates? — is bigotry. Clinton has high unfavorables, the hatred against her is widespread and visceral, etc. (Or “I don’t think this country is ready for a black president.”) But what these arguments do is, essentially, cede the argument to the bigots altogether. What these arguments do is say: “Oh, well, you’re going to say mean things if we elect her? We’ll just go with a man, then, and spare everybody the trouble.”
That’s no way to face misogyny, racism, homophobia, or any other sort of discrimination.
It would be different if the electability differences between the two candidates came down to something value-neutral — what types of plants they plant in their gardens, or whether they like pickles on their sandwiches, or even substantive things like “Who is going to be more likely to actually change the way we conduct our foreign policy, instead of being a third Bush regime?” The thing is, I don’t see that those issues are persuasive across vast enough sets of people to make any difference in which is more “electable.” Most of the difference comes down to, again…
Clinton has high unfavorables, the hatred against her is widespread and visceral, etc.
I’m not sure how much that matters. How many of the people who hate Clinton passionately would ever vote for any Democrat? If a given person is not going to vote for your candidate no matter who he or she is then it doesn’t matter if they hate your candidate with a passion or only think that the other party’s candidate is marginally better. Arguably, a candidate that “they” hate is a better one because he/she will cause his/her opponents to froth at the mouth unattractively and look worse to the voters. So I wouldn’t even worry about a candidate’s “negatives”. Go for the candidate you want. Electability will take care of itself…or not, as the case may be.
That may be what some Democratic Party bigwigs think. That is far from what from most Democratic voters would say. Charitably, they’d say that the superdelegates’ role is to go with the flow under normal circumstances, as they have done in their entire history, or pull the plug on the apparent leader if something should come up and make him unelectable in November. More cynical ones would say that they exist as a buffer to take down popular candidates who are nonetheless unacceptable to the party establishment. Neither agree that superdelegates should get to override the will of the voters for any reason under the sun. That would be the “democratic” part of Democratic Party speaking.
You are acting as if Obama alone sees anything wrong, peculiar duck that he is, with superdelegates overriding the will of the voters. Nancy Pelosi, who will head the convention, has expressly said that the superdelegates should not overturn the leader of pledged delegates. Where on Earth do you think she got that idea, Ron?
Under a democracy, the candidate who gets the most votes deserves the title. That’s as good a moral claim as any.
Again, you’re missing the point that most Democratic voters do not agree with this idea. And you are assuming that Democratic voters would more likely say that “superdelegates doing whatever they want is just fine and dandy” than “it’s the very fact of their existence that’s absurd”. An idea doesn’t get to chalked up as morally neutral merely because it is a written rule.
If you believe all Democratic voters are wrong and that superdelegates have the moral wherewithal to do anything, that’s a separate argument from this one. We are talking about the practical consequences for the Democratic Party if it should do something that will deeply unsettle its entire core.
Much like superdelegates overturning the will of the voters? The law has been clear that the DNC has the right to do whatever it wants to police its own state parties. You might say it was set up PRECISELY for this task, and that that was the whole idea. The rules are the rules.
Now, I don’t agree that the DNC has the moral right to do anything it wants merely because it can. I understand its argument – that if they don’t send a clear message, what’s to stop New York, California, and Texas from moving its primaries up to December next time and destroying the whole concept of a primary season. I also understand Michigan and Florida’s argument – Iowa and New Hampshire have had a privileged position for far too long. I’m on the fence on whether the punishment was appropriate.
My answer is that smallish swing states should always get a privileged position in the nomination process, because otherwise the candidate with the most name recognition and startup money will swamp the big states early on, not allowing voters to familiarize themselves with the entire pool of candidates. But I think it should rotate by region. In 2012, I want New Mexico and Arkansas (say), to take the place of Iowa and New Hampshire. In 2016, it could be West Virginia and Oregon.
Florida, yes. Michigan, not so much. In Michigan, Hillary ran the closest margin with “none of the above” (which garnered 40%) that I’ve ever seen, and given that Obama was never on the ballot in Michigan, it’s not true that Michigan supported Clinton over Obama. Last polls I saw were in mid-March, where they were running head to head.
In Florida, I believe the circumstances exacerbated Clinton’s lead over Obama (such as the property tax amendment that brought disproportionate elderly voters to Florida polls, even by Floridian standards), but even if the election were held today, she’d still win by some margin or another. Regardless, even counting the two states as is, Clinton does not close the gap in either the delegate or popular vote count.
The repercussions for the GE are not clear. On the one hand, only 27% of Florida voters thought its election results were valid – and I’d expect the number to be considerably lower in Michigan. In Florida, all the candidates were at least on the ballot, whereas in Michigan it was a not so spirited race between Clinton and Kucinich and “other”. And that poll itself was taken in the thick heat of the primary season, when spite-fuelled answers are likely to be at their highest. But if that number should winnow down to half by November, that’s still a considerable margin in a typically razor-thin state. My guess would be that it would hurt the Democratic Party, more so in Florida than in Michigan. I do not expect the Democrats to carry Florida. Michigan will perhaps be a true swing state, over from “lean slightly Dem”.
I wanted so much for a revote, and I’d still support one now in the unlikely chance such a vote would be certified.
How many of the people who hate Clinton passionately would ever vote for any Democrat?
You might be surprised. Just using me as an example, I would pull the lever for Joe Lieberman over many, many Republicans – John McCain among them. And I’m pretty far right. (Of course, so is Joe. But you did say ‘Democrats’, not ‘left-wingers’.)
There is a lot of frothing Clinton hatred over in the right wing, true, and that tends to overshadow the existence of frothing Clinton hatred among many liberals, particularly as those liberal Clinton haters don’t want to be seen as being part of the Judicial Watch crowd and so stay quiet. But they are there. A lot of Democrats hate what the Clintons have done to the party.
I would pull the lever for Joe Lieberman over many, many Republicans – John McCain among them. And I’m pretty far right.
Yeah, well, I voted for Bloomberg in the last mayoral election. The question in this case, really, is would you (and people like you) vote for Obama over McCain? Lieberman isn’t running. At least not any more. You had your chance to get him in line for the position and blew it.
A lot of Democrats hate what the Clintons have done to the party.
I’ve used the phrase “He’s a Clinton” to explain my opinion of “left-wing” European politicians such as Blair or Schroeder who aren’t really left-wing. It is an insult. But I find it hard to believe that most people on the left would really vote for McCain over Clinton or even sit out the election. Mr “Bomb Iran” just isn’t someone that gives the left a feeling of confidence.
agreed with pretty much all of this.
That may be what some Democratic Party bigwigs think.
I’d say that is definitely is what pretty much the entire Democratic party structure thinks.
That is far from what from most Democratic voters would say.
I agree.
Charitably, they’d say that the superdelegates’ role is to go with the flow under normal circumstances, as they have done in their entire history,
I doubt that very many Democratic voters had any idea up to this point that the superdelegates existed and had had two seconds’ thought about what their role is or what their history is. This is the first time it’s come up; this is the first time that the will of the Democratic primary electorate has been virtually evenly split.
or pull the plug on the apparent leader if something should come up and make him unelectable in November. More cynical ones would say that they exist as a buffer to take down popular candidates who are nonetheless unacceptable to the party establishment.
I’d say both are true, and were part of the intent of creating the superdelegate structure.
Neither agree that superdelegates should get to override the will of the voters for any reason under the sun.
That may well be the opinion of your average Democratic voter, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right. People who support a political party, or any other organization, should have some idea of how it works.
That would be the “democratic” part of Democratic Party speaking. … Under a democracy, the candidate who gets the most votes deserves the title.
The person who gets the most delegate votes will win the nomination. It’s just that the Democratic party deemed the primary voters not completely trustworthy and won’t let them pick all the delegates. The Democratic party deliberately made it’s nominating process undemocratic. It made it … republican. The electorate votes for delegates, who are pledged for the first ballot to a particular candidate. They are not voting for the candidate directly, and they don’t get to vote for all the delegates; some of the delegates hold their office by being successfully elected to state or federal office by the general electorate, which includes a lot of people who don’t vote in primaries. It’s actually pretty analogous to how the Congress was first set up; the House was elected directly by the people and the Senate was elected by the State legislatures, which in turn had been elected by each State’s electorate.
Whereas the Republican party has a delegate selection process that is more … democratic. All it’s delegates (IIRC) are elected by the primary voters. In the Republican party you can’t have this issue; unlike the Democratic party they trust their voters and give the party hierarchy much less room to override the primary voters.
You are acting as if Obama alone sees anything wrong, peculiar duck that he is, with superdelegates overriding the will of the voters. Nancy Pelosi, who will head the convention, has expressly said that the superdelegates should not overturn the leader of pledged delegates. Where on Earth do you think she got that idea, Ron?
From the fact that this will lead to the nomination of her favored candidate.
I’ll freely grant that the average Democratic voter is a) quite surprised that the primary voters don’t have the entire say over who the Democratic party nominates, b) thinks they should, and c) will be displeased if that isn’t what happens. All I can say is that the Democratic party should have thought of this; they should have considered “If a given candidate ends up with a few percentage point lead but we think they’re not the best choice, what’ll happen if we use this mechanism to reverse the result?”
They should do one of two things. Either tell the superdelegates “you should all vote as you damn well please” and explain to the electorate why this should be so (have the guts to back up what they’ve done), or they should say “you all should vote as the electorate in your states voted” and then abolish them after this convention.
Backtrack to the top of the thread and read how this issue came up. We were discussing the political ramifications, specifically from Black voters. The opinion of the Democratic voter may be that such an action by the superdelegates is unconscionable. You think they’re wrong. Well, wrong or not, they may just then wrongly abandon the Democratic Party. That is the whole point (and that was what we’ve been discussing).
You are arguing a point that no one is disputing. The superdelegate system is how the party works. We get it. We are disputing the moral implications of such a system, if it is to be used in certain manners. Your main argument has been thus:
1. It is not immoral for superdelegates to override the Democratic voters for any reason they feel like.
2. Superdelegates are how the Democratic Party nomination process works. Voters should know how their own party works.
(2) does not follow from (1). Give me an ethical argument, not a rehash of the rules.
So everyone who supports a rule that would objectively favour one candidate over another must be doing so out of a conscious desire to help that candidate. Let’s see where that takes us.
Voter ID laws (which in a limited form I have no problem with) affect the poor, elderly, and recent immigrants the most. Ergo, it helps the Republicans and hurts the Democrats. Therefore, all such laws are a deliberate scheme to help Republicans.
Or does this reasoning only apply to Democrats you don’t like?
Hmm. That depends on just what you mean by “Democratic party”. If you mean the people in the party structure, I agree, but no one has been disputing that point. If you mean the Democratic electorate, that they have no right to be turned off by a party process they don’t like, that they’re obligated to support a candidate they feel attained the nomination through illegitimate means, then I disagree. They have that right. They have no obligations.
This is all moot, because if things go as expected Clinton will need a supermajority of superdelegates to overturn Obama’s pledged delegate lead. I’ve heard estimates in the range of 3 out of every 4. It’s an impossibly tall order when the superdelegates are breaking the other way, with virtually every endorsement since Super Tuesday going his way (with the exception of Murtha), and his closing his once three digit superdelegate gap to around ten as of now. But this goes beyond Obama and Clinton. I plain don’t support such an overturning of democracy in any situation.
One last note. Your statement,
contradicts
Pelosi is part of the “entire Democratic Party structure”. This isn’t a quibbling of semantics – she’s its most powerful piece, as Speaker of the House and Chair of the convention. Many establishment, elected Democrats oppose such unprecedented meddling by superdelegates. I know you are trying to set up a dichotomy between “real Democratic Party folk, elected officials, adults” vs. “stupid (Obama) voters”, but that isn’t borne out in real life. In actuality, it’s a majority of the entire party, voter and official alike, and essentially all of its committed activists, against a thin smattering of party elites and opportunist partisan hacks.
Dianne, Robert, there’s a third possibility you’re not acknowledging. Disillusioned voters don’t have to turncoat to the Repubs or the Dems. They could just register with America’s most popular political party: Sitting On One’s Ass During Election Day. Democratic voters who don’t like Clinton or Obama, or conservatives who don’t like McCain, may never bring themselves to vote for the other party. But that doesn’t mean their respective parties are out of the clear. Having a popular candidate actually does matter.
EDIT: I missed Dianne mentioning sitting out the election on her last post. To which I say, I think it’s a greater danger than you’d think. Political junkies take it for granted that every four years we have the most important election in our lifetimes. I remember how much that was said about 2004, and I remember how many people stayed home anyway.
Sylphhead wrote:
I strongly agreed with this entire post until the last sentence; the folks who want the superdelegates to decide for Clinton include a lot of committed party activists and regular party members, after all, and they’re not just elites and hacks.
For the most part, I think they’re not motivated by selfish opportunism, but by a sincere (but I hope mistaken) belief that Obama is incapable of beating McCain in an election.
Two amendments to my earlier post.
First, the end of the first paragraph of #33 should say “(1) does not follow from (2)”. Reading it over again, the numbering as it is doesn’t make sense.
Second, I concede my last statement was unfairly pro-Obama. I did not mean to say that no party activists are rooting for Clinton – and by extension, the only plausible means she can win by this point, some sort of superdelegate coup. (I wish I had a more value-neutral word than “coup”, but it’s the only one I can think of that approximates what I’m trying to say. I’m also typing while stoned.)
What I was trying to communicate was that Democratic activists hate the superdelegate system more than other Democrats; hence I contrasted “most” with “all”. For instance, establishment Clinton backers will defend a superdelegate coup outright, whereas regular Clinton activists may say that they don’t like superdelegate system themselves, but are willing to make an exception for the following reasons (usually something like a dead girl/live boy scenario, under the presumption that Rev. Wright or bitter-gate qualifies as dead girl/live boy). And establishment Obama supporters will express negativity about the superdelegate system, whereas regular Obama activists will angrily denounce it. That’s all I was trying to say.
But it’s no secret that I’m pro-Obama – or more specifically, anti-Clinton – so chalk it up to my bias if you will.
I saw Edwards on the Colbert Report and his rationale for having remained uncommitted so far – he’s still trying to say what little sway he has, which is even by the most generous estimate is small, to goad the candidates into stronger health care and anti-poverty positions. Both Obama and Clinton supporters who condemn him for not making an endorsement yet should therefore STFU. Had it not been for Edwards, neither Clinton nor Obama would have any sort of universal health care plan. How good would it have been to been to looking at a potential President Edwards at this point in time? But alas…
There’s a certain wisdom in the Democratic Party nominating process — it’s like having the Veep be President of the even numbered members of the Senate: the Veep only matters when the vote is close, and the same is true for super delegates (which I’ve known about since forever ago).
What is true this cycle that hasn’t been true before is that a LOT of party members are going to be upset after the convention. However, with the race this close, it shouldn’t matter nearly as much as it seems to — it’s not like Clinton has 20% of the delegates and Obama has 80%. Right now the gap is 141 estimated delegates out of 3155 estimated total delegates, or less than 5% of the overall delegate count. The way some of you are arguing, you’d think it was a lot wider.
The best reason to have superdelegates is because it doesn’t matter how many people voted for Clinton in Florida — it’s going to go to McCain anyway. And the number of Republicans voting for Clinton in Texas, as a way to boost McCain’s odds in November, also don’t matter because McCain is going to win Texas, too. What’s going to matter is the number of delegates for which candidate from the states that are likely to be blue this time around. I’ve not taken the time to do the math, but if the super delegates don’t do that math, it’s further proof of the general stupidity in the Democratic party.
The nominating process is not a popularity contest to see if more people like Clinton than Obama or the other way around. The objective is electing the next president.
Under the Democrats’ proportional awarding of delegates, any triple digit lead in delegates would have been virtually impregnable back in February, let alone April. Consider it analogous to a baseball game. To make the comparison clearer, let’s consider this a ridiculously high-scoring game with tons of innings. It’s the bottom of the 89th, the second last inning. The score is 87-80. Percentage-wise, there isn’t much of a difference. But getting 7 runs in two innings is still a very tall order. It’s the absolute spread that counts.
For Florida, I’d actually say that Clinton stands a chance against McCain while I’d say Obama doesn’t. However, I see it as more than made up by Obama’s turning Virginia and North Carolina together in a Florida – they make up a similar number of EC votes, and their electoral prognosis is similar (i.e. likely Republican, but enough to keep it a close fight). And Clinton is too weak in the West, in that not only would she lose all the Southwest states that are ready to turn blue this year, but also states the Democrats need such as Oregon and Wisconsin.
The objective is to select the next Democratic candidate for president, who in turn has to go through another popularity contest very similar to the primary process.
I’d accept a superdelegate veto on the primary results for one reason only: a bona fide dead girl or live boy. (Exhaling without inhaling type controversies don’t count.) If the latest Rasmussen polls are to be believed, the majority of Pennsylvania Democratic voters won’t accept even that, so I’m not even a hard-liner on this issue. I’m simply someone who can’t believe that so-called Democrats can write off the democratic will – which is expressed through the majorities, be it 2% or 40% – so casually.
I’d accept a superdelegate veto on the primary results for one reason only: a bona fide dead girl or live boy. (Exhaling without inhaling type controversies don’t count.) If the latest Rasmussen polls are to be believed, the majority of Pennsylvania Democratic voters won’t accept even that, so I’m not even a hard-liner on this issue. I’m simply someone who can’t believe that so-called Democrats can write off the democratic will – which is expressed through the majorities, be it 2% or 40% – so casually.
I think it was Robert who put it best — please try to remember that the super delegates were also elected, thus what they do can only be described as “the will of the people.” It’s also the super delegates who have the biggest dog in this hunt. If the DNC makes a bad showing in November, they are more likely to be affected. Yes, one should keep We The People at the forefront of their actions, but advancing a candidate that will harm the party, whether because of their perceived racist and classist beliefs, or because they have strong negatives in some other area, isn’t the way to stay in office and keep We The People at the forefront of their actions.
In all likelihood, Obama will get the go-ahead at the convention. Clinton looks, to me, to be trying to debate Obama to death. This isn’t the 1800’s, when candidates debated all over the place (see the Lincoln v. Douglas debates …) because there were no televisions at the time, and even newspaper circulation wasn’t the best. They’ve each had their say — 21 times now — and it isn’t like we don’t know where they stand.
As an aside, some of the behavior I see from the Democratic Party faithful reminds me of what forced me out of the GOP years ago, and what has led to the ruination of the GOP since about the ’88 or ’92 election cycle. The DNC has always been a bit flaky, but this cycle the DNC is approaching the idiocy of the Religious Wrong and the damage they did to the GOP.
Not all of them. They include all current members of the DNC, all past former Democratic Presidents and Veeps, all former Senate and Congressional leaders, and all past DNC chairs.
There are, however, superdelegates that are elected. Some states have add-on delegates that are handed down by obscure rules, but are nonetheless bound by the election results, I believe. I forget how many of these there are, in total.
Once you’re elected, everything you could possibly do is tautologically defined as the “will of the people”? That means we can get rid of all these expensive checks and balances on elected officials, since they can’t ever go against the will of the people by definition. Hell, we’d only ever have to pay for elections once every few decades – once they’re elected, they manifest the will of the people, right?
I’m sorry, but that’s some really weak porridge right there.
I’m curious. Care to elabourate?
slyphead:
Well, wrong or not, they may just then wrongly abandon the Democratic Party.
Well, they might abandon the Democratic party once they find out that it’s not all that purely democratic. Whether or not they’d be wrong to do so is a matter of opinion.
So everyone who supports a rule that would objectively favour one candidate over another must be doing so out of a conscious desire to help that candidate.
Nope. I didn’t say that. I was asked about Speaker Pelosi, not “everyone”. Don’t put words in my mouth.
To answer what you propose as a contradiction in my position, I say that I believe that yes, the Democratic party hierarchy knew and knows what the whole idea of superdelegates is, but that Speaker Pelosi is deliberately speaking in contradiction to that in order to try to help secure the nomination for Sen. Obama. That’s an opinion, not something I can offer objective proof for.
I have a low opinion of Speaker Pelosi.
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Eliza, I will take a look at your links. It doesn’t surprise me that Obama supporters would have been less likely to vote downticket in primaries, simply because of who Clinton voters are — more connected to Democratic “machine” politics, and more older voters. However, having done campaigning for presidential and senate races, the fact is, when you do phone banking and door to door canvassing for the “top” of the ticket, you almost always urge voters to support the “bottom” as well. The stronger an organization is and the more outreach it does, the more it will have on the ground operations to urge such voting. Clinton’s ground game was virtually nil in many states, even in Virginia, where she has her headquarters, and where she really should have done better.
Regarding the “high” negatives of Clinton: I think the issue is not so much that these people might vote D, as the degree to which they would go out of their way to turn out just so they could defeat Clinton.
I don’t know. Nobody does. Increasingly, I think it is probably futile to vote on the basis of what you think other people might do.
Not all of them. They include all current members of the DNC, all past former Democratic Presidents and Veeps, all former Senate and Congressional leaders, and all past DNC chairs.
There are, however, superdelegates that are elected. Some states have add-on delegates that are handed down by obscure rules, but are nonetheless bound by the election results, I believe. I forget how many of these there are, in total.
If I’m not mistaken, those are all elected positions, including the DNC chair.
I guess you’re taking what I wrote more literally than I’d intended. What I mean is that these aren’t “Just Anybody”‘s. These are people who have a vested interest in the future of the Democratic Party. They are either current elected government officials (governors, senators, congresspeeps), or party officials elected through the normal party process (state and national conventions, for example, where the chair is elected by people who participate at that level).
I’m curious. Care to elabourate?
A number of issues in the GOP became so heavily charged — and this is really obvious with McCain’s campaign and party members saying they’d vote for Clinton before voting for McCain — that a lot of us just plain left the party. Many within the GOP today talk about “Neo-Conservatives” like they are a good thing. They aren’t. They are prone to playing dirty tricks because the person isn’t “Conservative-Enough”, and the result has been this insane march right-ward (wrong-ward …) into “neo-conservativism” — big government for big business, big government for controlling the bedroom, big government for controlling as many aspects of peoples lives as they can dream up. That is NOT the conservative way of doing thing. I wish they’d just go away.
I see the same thing happening within the DNC this cycle, particularly from the Clinton camp. Politics always involves compromise and when compromise is tossed out the window, or when slurs and slanders replace reasoned debate, the only person who benefits is the candidate. The usual DNC problem is pandering to every imaginable special interest group out there, hoping to garner another 1 or 2 percentage points.
FurryCatHerder, I think one of the major things that have hurt the GOP since the ’88 and ’92 elections is that they promised to be the party of small government and greater ethical standards and then betrayed both.
Although, RonF, that happened before 1988 (Dave Barry made it a truism, to say nothing of liberal writers).
These are people who have a vested interest in the future of the Democratic Party.
I wouldn’t trust in that as a general principle. See the Iron Law of Institutions. (When a fellow Republican accused him of ruining the party, Penrose replied, “Yes, but I’ll preside over the ruins.”)
Obama and the huge amounts of money he’s received from small donors, by the way, might cause the party power structure to take notice without getting their hackles up.
That is to say, please keep calling him a radical with close ties to Web liberals.