May 23, 2008

News, or News Analysis?

By: Sonny Bunch

Thursday’s Philly Inquirer featured an astonishingly lazy piece of “analysis” (at least, I hope it’s “news analysis” instead of straight up “news”) by Larry Eichel on Hillary Clinton and the popular vote. Where should I begin…

“In counting the popular vote, the main sources of consternation are, as ever, the problem states of Michigan and Florida. They held their primaries earlier than party rules allowed, throwing the results into limbo.” This is not at all right. As far as the popular vote is concerned, the results for Florida are not in limbo at all: Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in a state that neither of them campaigned by 870,986 votes to 576,214 votes, for a Clinton margin of victory of 294,772 votes. Michigan’s results aren’t really in “limbo” either–we have hard, concrete results for the state–but I’m inclined to ignore them as well since neither Obama nor Edwards was on the ballot.

What’s “in limbo” is the status of the delegates from that state. The DNC doesn’t decide whether or not a state’s votes should count–it only decides what to do with the delegates from that state. Which brings me to my next point. Eichel closes his piece by writing that “In the end, though, the nomination will be won or lost in terms of who has the most delegates. And Obama’s advantage there is clear-cut.” Yes, the race will be won by whoever has the most delegates, but super delegates count just the same as pledged delegates. As I’ve argued before: Obama cannot win his party’s nomination with a majority in pledged delegates alone. Winning a majority of the pledged delegates leaves him 20% short of the necessary number of delegates to take home the nomination. I’m sorry that’s inconvenient but it’s a fact nonetheless.

Getting back to the popular vote for a moment, Eichel writes excluding FL and MI’s popular votes, “Obama is ahead by about 449,034 votes, according to the nonpartisan Web site Real Clear Politics. His margin is a lot smaller than it was two weeks ago, before Clinton’s landslide victories in West Virginia and Kentucky. A big win by Clinton in Puerto Rico on June 1 could make it smaller still but not wipe it out.” Emphasis mine. Emphasized because it is empirically wrong. According to Jay Cost over at Real Clear, 2 million Puerto Ricans voted in 2004. Party registration doesn’t matter in Puerto Rico, so they could all vote in the Democratic primary. If Hillary picked up 67% of that vote (as she did in West Virginia and almost did in Kentucky) she would instantly pick up a lead of a couple hundred thousand votes without including Florida or Michigan.

Granted, that is unlikely. But to say “A big win by Clinton in Puerto Rico on June 1 could make it smaller still but not wipe it out” is, quite simply, incorrect. Let’s rewrite Mr. Eichel’s sentence: “A big win by Clinton in Puerto Rico on June 1 would make Obama’s lead in the popular vote smaller, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to wipe it out.” You lose some of the zip when you strive for accuracy, don’t you?

Anyway, this all goes back to my point that members of the media are trying to put an end to the Democratic primary before, y’know, it’s actually over. They can’t stand the fact that Obama has to rely on super delegates to clinch the nomination because they want to argue that Clinton’s grasping at super delegates is, somehow, immoral. So instead of dealing with that, they’re trying to force her out of the race before all of the primaries have run so as to limit her appeal to the super delegates. You stay classy, news media.