As pretty much every campaign observer knows by now, Barack Obama not only leads Hillary Clinton among pledged delegates, his margin is big enough that everyone (including the Clinton campaign) is confident that he’ll go to the convention with a comfortable delegate lead.
With that in mind, it doesn’t take long to reach the question on the minds of many: If Clinton is running second, and won’t be able to catch up, what’s the point of continuing? The answer, of course, is that Clinton believes superdelegates can give her the edge (and the nomination), but even that seems unlikely if superdelegates vote largely in line with earned delegates, as is likely.
There is, however, a catch. The Clinton campaign’s possible trump card is the Democratic popular vote. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), a key Clinton surrogate, emphasized this point today.
On a conference call with reporters moments ago, Rendell said: “Let’s assume that Senator Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count.” He then asked, “which is more democratic” — choosing the winner of the popular vote or the winner of the pledged delegate count.
“The way we select delegates is not all that democratic,” Rendell continued, in a reference to caucus voting. “The rules were going in that super-delegates were there to exercise their judgment…as a super-delegate I want to make sure we win in the fall, and I’m gonna take the candidate who can do that.”
Rendell’s argument has plenty of merit. For all the talk about abiding by the “will of the people,” the Clinton campaign may very well want to make this argument literal — forget primaries, caucuses, states, and delegates, and just count up the voters. If one candidate, over the course of 53 or so contests, won more votes than the other, the argument goes, superdelegates would be foolish to dismiss this metric altogether.
Fair enough. The problem with the argument is that Obama leads in this category, too, and the available evidence suggests he’s also unlikely to relinquish this advantage.
Rendell told reporters on the conference call, “Let’s assume that Senator Clinton goes ahead in the popular vote count.” As a thought experiment, it’s a legitimate exercise. As a practical matter, it’s a tough assumption to make. Mark Schmitt explained:
For the record, Senator Obama came out of the Mississippi primary with an advantage of 99,000 votes over Senator Clinton, more than I had predicted based on his edge in Alabama. That puts his margin in the nationwide popular vote — by a measure that includes Florida but not Michigan — at more than 500,000.
As I noted yesterday, it will take a colossal victory, almost 60%, for Clinton to get a 200,000 vote edge out of Pennsylvania. And if she does that, there is no plausible scheme under which she could pick up the remaining 300,000 votes to gain even the dubious moral claim of an edge in the popular vote.
It’s well past time to enter the gracious winding-down stage of this long, and until recently, healthy campaign. The last candidate I can remember to keep punching like this even after the race was effectively decided was Jerry Brown in 1992. I’m sure Clinton remembers the unpleasantness of that 1992 convention. I doubt that she wants to be that guy.
The point isn’t lost on the Obama campaign.
Buttressed by a victory in last night’s Mississippi primary, Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign claimed on Wednesday that it not only had a pledged delegate lead that would be hard to reverse, but also a popular vote advantage that Sen. Hillary Clinton would have difficulties overcoming.
“Although we don’t think this is the barometer on which the race will be decided, we have a big popular vote lead,” said campaign manager David Plouffe. “Our popular vote lead is up around a million. Which is obviously a significant edge and one they would have a very tough time reversing.”
There are different tallies available, but looking at RCP’s, Obama leads the popular-vote race by about 700,000 votes if we include primaries and caucuses sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. If we include Florida, which the campaigns agreed shouldn’t count, Obama still has a 400,000 vote lead. If we include Florida and Michigan, which the candidates agreed shouldn’t count and where Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, Obama still leads, though by a modest 80,000-vote margin.
But here’s a twist — the RCP totals don’t include the popular votes from Iowa, Nevada, Washington state, and Maine, three of which Obama won by wide margins. (In other words, his sizable popular vote lead is even bigger than it appears.)
There are still eight states and two territories yet to vote. Couldn’t Clinton yet claim the popular vote lead? There are multiple reports explaining why that’s highly unlikely.
I suppose different Dems will have different priorities in terms of metrics, but if I were a superdelegate, I’d rank the data points in this order:
1. Pledged delegates
2. Popular votes
3. States won
4. Money raised
5. Polls
If one candidate has most, or all, of these metrics wrapped up, then it’s time to end the nominating process, start bringing the party together behind the winner, and get ready for the general election.
If Clinton can’t catch Obama in the popular vote totals, then we’re getting pretty close to that point.
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