Too Lazy To Do The Math
Someone finally did the cipherin' that I've been meaning to do. If the Dems had the winner-take-all rules, rather than the (just as arbitrary, seems to me--and don't forget the general election is mostly winner take all) Hillary would have a solid lead in delegates right now and Obama would look like he's the one preventing the unification of the party by staying in.
On the other hand, if the Repubs had adopted the Dem rules, they'd still have a forur-way race, with Ron Paul as spoiler.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:46 AM
8 Comments:
hey, I wrote about this about 5-6 weeks ago, on this blog
AAGuy
But did you have the numbers to back it up?
yes. check the comments section. I have been amazed that the Clinton backers have not figured this out themselves and made the case.
AAGuy
As usual, the Dems are trying to engineer outcomes, and as usual, the outcome they're going to get is not the one they wanted.
To use the Posner observation from the 2000 recount mess, these type of posthoc analyses don't bear much weight since the candidates compete according to the rules in effect at the time and tailor their strategies accordingly. ( I think he was saying the fact that Bush lost the popular vote wasn't meaningful since if the election depended on popular rather than electoral vote, the cndidates would have run different campaigns). If the dems had winner take all primaries, then presumably Obama would not spent so much time on small state organizing and probably would have turned to the big states earlier. While he might have lost, nobody would have expected him to win under the current rules either so who knows?
These "what if" scenarios can make for some spirited discussions and thought experiments, but I can't see how infomrative they could be to current conditions.
NEG (frustrated by Google)
Oh but they're extremely informative, NEG. What the Dems have is close to a tie--or at least no clear winner based on pledged delegates--so it's up to the convention to figure who to run. Normally, this would mean the candidate who has the best chance of winning in the general election might be chosen, so figuring that out--as opposed to just mindlessly counting who has the most delegates--is of the essence.
But I don't see that you're saying anything here, LAGuy. The question isn't examining winner-take-all-rules in the Democrat primary post-hoc; it's examining winner take all rules in the general. It's not at all clear that examining Democrat primary under a what-if scenario adds much light to the question of what strategy you should be following for the general. Can McCain best take apart Hillary or Obama, and vice-versa? Does McCain need the so-called conservative Republican base or to eschew it? How about Hillary and the the Big-O Two? WHat do these questions have to do with recalculating the Dems primary?
Hillary would have a solid lead? So what? Which one of them is going to have a solid lead come November?
SWMBCg, etc.
No one can read the future, but contra SWMBCg, they can look at the present and ask if trends continue, what will happen?
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