Here’s a question for Jerome Armstrong. Who ‘won’ the contests in New Hampshire, Nevada, Missouri, and Texas? We all know the popular wisdom. Clinton won NH, NV, and TX, while Obama won Missouri. Here’s the reality:
- New Hampshire:
Obama: 9
Clinton: 9
Nevada:
Obama: 13
Clinton: 12
Missouri:
Obama: 36
Clinton: 36
Texas (tentatively):
Obama: 98
Clinton: 95
Clinton supporters have 101 excuses for why Obama’s tie in New Hampshire and victories in Nevada and Texas are not legitimate. Here’s how Jerome puts it:
Except that, when you listen to the Obama campaign talk about it’s victories lately, I have this inclination to see right through it– that they are not talking about support of the people, but instead having gamed the process. “The Math” as one of their talking point leaders, Jonathan Alter, likes to call it. But, as riverdaughter calls it, “people are just now starting to notice that he gets more delegates by suppressing Clinton voters than by actually, you know, winning.” The latest being that Obama “won” Texas (you know, like Bush “won” Florida).
I don’t want to become an English teacher here (with Jerome that would be sadistic), but Obama’s campaign hasn’t ‘suppressed’ anyone’s votes (as the Clintons attempted to do to students in Iowa, and casino workers and nurses in Las Vegas). What I think riverdaughter means is that the caucus system suppresses votes. That’s true, but it is hardly Obama’s fault. Jerome claims that Obama is ‘gaming the system’, but that is just a petulant way of saying that Obama’s campaign understands the system, while Hillary Clinton’s campaign does (or did) not.
After all, in a contest for delegates, what good does it do to ‘win’ Nevada and lose a delegate? What sense does it make to spend millions to get a 59-48 delegate advantage out of New Jersey only to see Obama spend $50,000 to get a 15-3 advantage out of Idaho?
And what do the Clinton supporters say about such blunders? They say that Idaho will never vote for a Democrat in November, so their New Jersey delegates are more significant than Obama’s Idaho delegates. The retort, of course, is that getting played for a sucker doesn’t make your delegates more valuable. In any case, John McCain is beating Clinton 63%-27% in Idaho so of course the Clintonistas have written off the state. Obama trails by a far more respectable 52%-39% margin. Let’s not forget that we have a senate race in Idaho this year to replace Larry ‘Wide Stance’ Craig. It’d be nice for Larry LaRocco if he didn’t have to overcome a 36-point deficit at the top of the ticket.
More Jerome:
…all his supporters now say they won Texas. Why? Because of the undemocratic proportional allocation of caucus delegates, such as an urban areas that voted Obama being worth more delegates than a Latino stronghold for Clinton in another part of the state, because of a previous election. That’s not a Democratic system– its a relic of machine-age politics. And to claim a “win” based on a system like that is not people-powered politics.
First let’s nitpick a little. Why does Jerome think that Vermont and the District of Columbia each have 15 delegates? Does he think it is because of population? Vermont has more people than Washington DC. It’s because the District is overwhelmingly Democratic. Kerry got 18,000 more votes out of DC than he got out of Vermont. So, even though Vermont has roughly 100,000 more people than DC does, DC gets the same amount of delegates. Call it undemocratic if you want, but that is how delegates are allocated, and Texas is no different. I suppose President Hillary Clinton will complain that President Musharraf or President Medvedev aren’t playing by the rules when things don’t go her way.
But, is winning delegates, winning by the rules…is that ‘people-powered politics’? Someone like Jerome Armstrong is, after all, supposed to know what people-powered politics is, right? I mean, he wrote a book about it. Yet, he doesn’t seem to know fuck-all about people-powered politics. Remind me, Jerome, how the Clinton campaign has:
…sidelin[ed] the high-paid consultants who have advised Democrats straight into minority status; evict[ed] the party’s inner circle of the shrill single-issue advocacy groups (like NARAL Pro-Choice America) that demand absolute fealty to their positions, even if it means losing an election; and influx[ed] new ideas (and cash) into the party via the “netroots.”
New ideas like having DLC President Bruce Reed feed her debate groaners like “change we can Xerox“, as if anyone under thirty-five uses the work ‘Xerox’ to mean ‘copy’. Tossing aside the high paid consultants, like giving Mark Penn $20 million to totally fuck up your campaign.
Jerome takes Chris Bowers to task because Bowers doesn’t want the Reagan Democrats back. But then he insists that all Obama’s supporters are Reagan Democrats, or ‘quasi-evangelical/republicans that come out to support him in the red states’.
