"By this point in the 2016 Democratic primary, in contrast, a huge bloc Democratic governors, senators and representatives had chosen a candidate, Hillary Clinton."

"But this cycle, the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats and Democratic governors are still on the sidelines. Indeed, the 2020 Democratic primary looks more like the 2016 Republican primary, when most GOP officials held their fire until deep into the race, than that year’s Democratic race.... Warren has two obvious problems with party elites. First, there is the perception among some of them that her left-wing stands, such as Medicare for All, are too risky for the general election and decrease the party’s chances of defeating President Trump.... Secondly, electoral considerations aside, there is a center-left wing of the Democratic Party that fundamentally disagrees with Warren’s more leftward positions... Warren also has a third challenge with party elites that is less obvious. The Massachusetts senator clashed with senior aides to President Obama for much of his tenure in the White House. She, like Sanders, isn’t quite in line with the party’s establishment. A Warren administration would probably be less likely to hire former Clinton (Bill and Hillary) and Obama aides in key posts than, say, a Biden, Booker or Harris one. So people connected with the party establishment (like many DNC members) may be fine with Warren but prefer other candidates for more self-interested reasons.... The potential danger for the Massachusetts senator is that 'party elites lukewarm about Warren' turns into 'party elites organize to stop Warren.' And perhaps Democratic voters care more about the views of their party’s elites than Republican voters did in 2016."

From "Why Aren’t More Democrats Endorsing Warren?" (FiveThirtyEight).

I wish there were some discussion of the way Democratic Party elites behaved in 2008, endorsing Hillary Clinton early and interfering with the rise of Barack Obama. Aren't they avoiding giving Biden what they gave Hillary in '08?

Anyway, things were different then. There were "superdelegates," and the elite had reason to think they could control things. Here's a WaPo article from September 2018, "The DNC voted to strip superdelegates of their powers. Will it matter for 2020?":

"McCain leads Obama by a 46% to 41% margin."

Polls Zogby:

And McCain not only enjoys a five-point edge in a two-way race against Obama, but also in a four-way contest including liberal independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, the poll reveals. In the four-way contest, McCain wins 44% support, Obama 39%, Barr 3% and Nader 2%.

And this poll was taken from August 14-16, before the Saddleback Civil Forum which, it seems, will boost McCain. Obama needs a smashingly good convention week.

ADDED: A poll. Note: By pick Hillary, I mean Obama should pick Hillary for VP. Please take Obama's point of view.

How can Obama turn things around in the next week?
	Pick Hillary!
	Do something other than pick Hillary.
pollcode.com free polls

To give you more room to opine, I'll make a second poll, and please do this from the point of view of the superdelegates who want their party to win.

What should the superdelegates do at the convention next week?
	Throw the nomination to Hillary.
	Stick (sandal!) with Obama.
pollcode.com free polls

"To honor and celebrate" the "voices and votes" of the primaries, "both Senator Obama's and Senator Clinton's names will be placed in nomination."

Ah! What thrills await us? Or do you think it will be pure and dignified honoring and celebrating of the voices?

Although Clinton will be nominated, and there will be a roll-call vote on her nomination, the two sides are still working out the mechanics of how that will happen, aides said. Clinton will not have enough delegates to win the nomination, which Obama will formally secure before delivering his acceptance speech on Thursday night.

How can you be so sure? The nomination will be determined by the superdelegates, and they can do what they want.

ADDED: This news made me go reread Maureen Dowd's column from a couple days ago:

Obama ... allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that “demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters.” This, even though postmortems, including the new raft of campaign memos leaked by Clintonistas to The Atlantic — another move that undercuts Obama — finger Hillary’s horrendous management skills....

It would have been better to put this language in the platform: “A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

Dampen the dreams of our daughters...

Those platform writers know about alliteration, but they don't notice the imagery.

Pick Obama: He's taller.

Plouffe to the superdelegates:

We played by the rules, set by you, the D.N.C. members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

His argument is, of course, that candidate with the most pledged delegates should get the superdelegates' vote, but, really, why shouldn't the superdelegates take every relevant factor into account? The superdelegates are part of the rules, so it isn't necessary to bind them to any specific "metric" in order to legitimize their role.

Let them consider who is taller if tallness helps the party with the election. And it does, doesn't it? Picture a debate with McCain and Obama. Literally, picture it, the 2 men standing side by side. Obama's height will affect voters' minds whether you like it or not.

"So the truth about the super Ds is that they would rather lose with Barack than win with HRC..."

"... because they KNOW that if they lose with Barack, their pal John McCain is president and they get the royal treatment for two years."

Yes, and:

Let's give the mendacious Clinton camp the benefit of the doubt and say that Hillary is a sure thing, while Obama would likely lose. Wrong, but let's grant that idea.

I. Wouldn't. Care. Anyway. And neither should you.

... America stands on the verge of a new political realignment....

[I]f the Democratic Party gets the vote of the Millennial generation again, it will have it for the rest of their natural lives, creating a daunting electoral majority that will ensure Democratic advantages if not Democratic dominance for the next 30-40 years--whether McCain happens to get elected in 2008 or not.

With Obama at the top of the ticket, the Millennials will come to the polls in massive numbers to elect him....

Obama is the nominee who can literally lock in structural advantages for Democrats for the next forty years.

I think it is obvious that the superdelegates will pick Obama. They have their own self-interest to consider, not to mention the long-term interest of the party. The choice for Obama is clear — and it would be clear even if they knew Clinton would win and Obama will lose.

"Why can't Clinton close the deal?"

Kos asks. Well, yeah. But why can't Obama close the deal?

I keep hearing about this "deal" and the unconsummated closing of it. This damned "deal" meme is everywhere. But there is no overarching national mind that is dithering over what decision to make. It's not like a seller and a buyer who can't come to terms. Individual voters have made their decisions, and it happens that neither candidate is preferred by enough voters to overcome the reservation of power that the party leaders have made for themselves. Deal with it.

Here's the post about the Pennsylvania primary.

1. Turnout is very high, unsurprisingly. Isn't this fun?

2. There's a lot of jockeying over a number: The percentage points by which Hillary must win to justify the continuation of her campaign. Is it 10? Is it 5? Let's set the number in advance. Or do you think she should just go on until all the primaries are over, now that she's come this far?

3. The polls close and CNN pronounces the race "very competitive." They can't call it. That seems bad for Hillary... but I don't trust CNN. If they declared her the winner, the audience would abscond.

4. Wolf Blitzer at 8:00: "We cannot project a winner based on the exit polls alone. We're going to have to wait and see hard numbers coming up." Hmmm. So they have their exit polls, but they want to coordinate with the news of the actual ballot counts. What does that mean ... other than CNN wants you to watch CNN?

5. CNN predicts Hillary is the winner. Wolf offers no numbers, but Drudge is showing CLINTON 53%/OBAMA 47%. But maybe you're watching Andrew Lloyd Weber night on "American Idol."

6. "Um." Long, long pause. "You must never start to stop. Having said that, this is the biggest show and biggest platform that, no matter what, you're strong enough, and you're great enough... to pick up the pieces." Wolf Blitzer to Hillary Clinton. No! Paula Abdul to Brooke White.

7. David Gergen on what the superdelegates are thinking: "This is not just a question of who can win in the fall. They have to also make sure they held their party together. If at the end of this, the math is against her, she winds up with fewer delegates, fewer votes, and fewer states, if they turn it over to her, they run the very real risk they will drive African Americans out of the party for a generation. And they will drive away young voters. There're some things worse than losing an election in trying to build a party."

8. Hillary Clinton does her victory speech: Obama has more money! Give me money!

9. Obama speaks. He's in Indiana, and he thanks John Mellencamp and "his beautiful wife" for driving to Evansville from (I think) Bloomington. Very Indiana-y. He seems to be giving his stump speech. Or maybe I'm just tired.... Good night, everybody.

10. (Written the morning after.) You've got the comments up beyond 200, which means you can't see the newest comments unless you click on "post a comment" and then "newer" or "newest," so why not move on to the post I just put up.

Obama refuses to debate Clinton in North Carolina.

Marc Ambinder says it's because his advisors "did not want to give Hillary Clinton any excuse to stay in the race beyond Tuesday, assuming she doesn't fare that well." I don't like it. He just did badly in a debate, so it looks like he's afraid to debate. He should be bold and show us how good he is, show us what a strong candidate he'll be in the fall. Otherwise, Clinton, who just bested him in debate, has reason to claim she's the stronger candidate.

The Clinton campaign should milk this like mad. Here's their first parry:

It is unfortunate that Senator Obama has chosen to brush off the people of North Carolina by flatly refusing to debate....

Hillary Clinton is committed to debating the issues facing the Tar Heel State. We hope Sen. Obama will make the same commitment

Flatly refusing.

They must be furiously brainstorming: What's the most apt way to plant in people's minds that he's chicken, that he's weakening, tiring, and he doesn't want to give people a chance to see it?

Howard Kurtz says:

In political terms, Obama had little incentive for another face-off. He's comfortably ahead in the Tarheel State, and after drawing most of the tough questions in last week's ABC debate in Pennsylvania, he undoubtedly wasn't looking forward to a sequel.

(Is it Tar Heel or Tarheel? It's Tar Heel.)

I disagree with Kurtz. 1. Even if Obama is ahead, he should try to defeat Clinton as impressively as possible. 2. His poor performance is the reason to come back with a solid performance. 3. It's not just about North Carolina; it's about proving to all of us and to the superdelegates that he's the better candidate. 4. He's handed her a fat, juicy issue, and she'll take advantage of it (which in itself will be a demonstration of her fighting strength as a candidate).

And speaking of weakness and evasiveness, the Obama quote of the day is "Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

"Hard being a superdelegate, huh?... No sense staying neutral this long if you don’t end up picking the winner, right?"

"Four Days in Denver" — the movie treatment (by "West Wing" writer Lawrence O’Donnell Jr.).

What will Hillary Clinton put us through for that 5% chance she has of winning the nomination?

David Brooks writes:

For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound....

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Brooks must have thought that last line was too clever not to use, but it's actually only a childish flipping of a phrase to its opposite, and, worse, it's not even true. She has the audacity of hope. By calling hope hopelessness, Brooks enables himself to ask why she goes on and to pretend there isn't the obvious answer: she has hope of winning.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish...?

How is what's she's doing any different from what every other candidate does as long as there's a chance? To say it's "selfish" or "narcissistic" to think you're special is to criticize everyone who has what it takes to campaign for the presidency.

Brooks reviles Clinton for "her relentlessly political life... encased in the apparatus of political celebrity," with an "impersonal" campaign that's "like a machine for the production of politics" that "plows ahead... following its own iron logic." So... she's a politician with a campaign. That's special because.... ?

Brooks challenges her to step outside her own machine and stop it, to "surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice." Why? Why should she behave differently from every other politician?

Her opponent is wounded by a problem of his own making. Brooks would have you think the Clinton campaign is chewing away at him with scurrilous, pointless attacks, but Obama's problem with Jeremiah Wright is something important about him that we need to think through. Meanwhile, she's reaped some important victories in key states and stands to win big in Pennsylvania — which will be a test of how deeply the Wright controversy has hurt Obama. For her to stay in now is not bizarrely robotic behavior. It utterly normal.

Or does it just seem wrong coming from a woman? Wouldn't it be wonderful if the lady displayed self-sacrifice?

ADDED: Ed Morrissey writes about the Brooks column. Bottom line:

[T]he Hillary-must-quit contingent seem to forget one thing: she’s still winning states, and people still want to vote for her. Obama hasn’t won the nomination, nor will he win it in the primaries. Why should she quit under those circumstances? By all indications, Hillary will likely win almost all of the upcoming contests, with just North Carolina as a potential exception.

The same people who dreamed up the superdelegate structure and who made it impossible for the primaries to select between two evenly-matched candidates want to be let off of the hook for the disaster they created.

I'm not convinced the superdelegate structure is a disaster. It's a structural safeguard. I don't buy the argument that "democracy" must prevail when you're talking about voting (or, worse, caucusing) to pick a candidate for an election that takes place up to 10 months later. A candidate who's popular in February may look weak by the end of the summer. New information emerges, world events change, different issues come to the foreground, and the other party commits to its nominee. The superdelegates have the power to save their party from a disastrous candidate.

Jeralyn Merritt frames the facts to show that the candidates are about even:

So, Hillary's ahead in popular vote and electoral votes, in the big states and the states most likely to go Democratic in November. She's ahead in the big states that are critical for Dems in November. Obama's got a small lead in overall pledged delegates and has won more Republican states that have a slim to no chance of going blue in November.

The superdelegates need to consider who will bring it home for Democrats in November. The results so far indicate that person is Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama.

Bayh's test: Which candidate won the states with the most electoral votes?

I think it's a good idea for Obama and Clinton proponents to propose different measures for the purposes of argument to the superdelegates, like Bayh's test. But that test needs to be refined to focus on states that might go Republican in the fall. New York, California, and Massachusetts don't matter. You may think the fairest test really is the pledged delegates, because that is what the candidates were competing for. Bayh's test retroactively treats state primaries and caucuses as though they were winner-take-all, but if they were the candidates would have fought differently. But it's not clear to me that the candidates relied on something that the superdelegates have to respect.

The superdelegates should be using their power to choose the best candidate for the party, and there are many arguments that could refute the assumption that the candidate that collected the most delegates — but failed to lock the nomination — will do best in November. Since November is crucial, the Electoral College should be taken into account, but not in the crude way Bayh suggests, since the superdelegates shouldn't worry about marginal preferences for Obama or Clinton in states that will almost certainly give its electoral votes to whichever candidate the party nominates. Thus, Clinton's popularity in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and, face it, Florida) matters, but her popularity in New York and California doesn't.

Should the Democratic Party hold a caucus of the superdelegates?

This idea, proposed by Tennessee governor Philip Bredesen, is designed to avoid a brutal summer of fighting between Obama and Clinton:

In early June, after the final primaries, the Democratic National Committee should call together our superdelegates in a public caucus....

This is not a proposal for a mini-convention with all the attendant hoopla and sideshows. It is a call for a tight, two-day business-like gathering, whose rules would be devised by the national committee, of the leaders of our party from all over America to resolve a serious problem. There would be a final opportunity for the candidates to make their arguments to these delegates, and then one transparent vote.

It sounds like a very sensible idea, which is why my sense is that this won't happen. Think about why not. One candidate or the other stands to benefit from waiting until August, and that candidate and some number of her supporters will resist the caucus. How can it happen without widespread agreement?

Some might raise reasonable concerns about the cost and logistics of assembling these superdelegates. But those would be manageable; this is a business meeting of a few hundred people almost three months from now, not an extended, cast-of-thousands convention.

If it's possible to do this, isn't it possible to line up the superdelegates behind the scenes and force them to make firm, public commitments? That would achieve the same result. Also, if you have this assembly when the nominee is still unknown, you're inviting strong partisans to a huge national stage — it will be far more dramatic than any political convention we've seen in our liftetime — and who knows what bloody chaos will play out?

Bredersen thinks what America will see is "a modern political party focused on results," which, "confronted with an unexpected problem," used "common sense to come together, roll up our sleeves and direct events to a successful conclusion." Yes, it would be great if we got to see such a fine party in action, but since it's a real political party, you don't know what might happen. It could be uglier than a summer-long struggle. If you want to be pragmatic, Governor Bredersen, you can't be idealistic about it. Think of the risks. And if it's necessary to script the caucus and ensure a smooth resolution of the problem, why do you need a meeting at all?

Eliot and Hillary.

In happier times. He was — is? — her superdelegate. Notice the body language in that video. She's leaning toward him, but he looks as though he's trying to avoid her. He's twisted away from her even as he's supposed to be showing his support. That's odd.

What effect will Eliot's disgrace have on Hillary — and more generally on the Democrats? It will make any sex scandals affecting Republicans harder to use. Hillary, of course, has always had her sexually errant husband, and Eliot's problems might remind us of Bill's. But how does that affect what we think about her? Perhaps we'll be reminded of the old reasons to feel sympathetic toward her. Or, cutting the other way, we may get squeamish about putting Bill back in the White House.

"The difference between making arguments and analyzing them is not always recognized, and ... readers get outraged about things I never said."

The Fish-eye view: Why Stanley Fish bothers to write columns for the New York Times.

For the most part, it is not my purpose in this space to urge positions, or come down on one side or the other of a controversial question. Of course, I do those things occasionally and sometimes inadvertently, but more often than not I am analyzing arguments rather than making them; or, to be more precise, I am making arguments about arguments, especially ones I find incoherent or insufficiently examined....

Given a choice between being trivial and being ethical in any direction whatsoever, I’ll take trivial (although I might want to debate the judgment), because ethics is not something I’m doing in these columns. This doesn’t mean that I think ethical questions are unimportant — although I do think there are fewer of them than is usually assumed; there are none, for example, in the current controversy about superdelegates; it is just that if you want those questions raised and examined, you’ll have to go elsewhere. This might seem to be an admission that my perspective is severely limited. Yes, it is, but it is my conviction is that its limitedness is its strength and that were it to be expanded the only gain would be the pious fuzziness you can get from a thousand other commentators.

Heh heh. Fish is eely. See how "inadvertently" he "urged" a "position" on the superdelegates question — the most pressing political issue of the day?

If you think the superdelegates should support the candidate with the most total votes, do you know whether it is Clinton or Obama?

It's only Obama if you exclude Florida and Michigan. Then, Obama is ahead by 598,266. Impressive! But if you throw Florida and Michigan back in, Clinton wins by 30,657. But that's not really fair. Clinton had name recognition that counted for too much at that early point, especially when they weren't supposed to be campaigning, and Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. Now, there's talk of redoing Florida and Michigan so those states can have delegates, but it's important to see that they will also have an effect on the popular vote totals that will influence the superdelegates.

Another issue raised in the above-linked article (by Blake Fleetwood) is that the popular vote total undervalues the states that had caucuses, since a smaller portion of voters turn out for a caucus. And Obama did so much better in caucuses than in primaries.

I counted the difference:

Using the numbers here, I found that Obama has won 290 delegates in caucuses, and Clinton has won 154. That's 65% for Obama and 35% for Clinton. In the primaries, by stark contrast, Obama has won 1072 delegates, and Clinton has won 1058. (Actually, 1058.5 — she won 1.5 delegates in the Americans Abroad primary.) That's 50% to 50%. You need to go to decimals to show the Obama percentage lead in the primaries: 50.3% to 49.7%.

But if you want to use total popular vote as a basis for argument to the superdelegates, what do you do with this information? You can't say with confidence that Obama really should have more total votes, because it seems to be that Obama supporters are overrepresented among the kind of people who go to caucuses. We can think of some characteristics that may be shared by caucus-goers and Obama-supporters — notably youth and political fervor. So who was "cheated" out of popular votes in the caucus states? Obama or Clinton?

In any event, it's hard to assign value to the popular vote, since the candidates were not playing — at least not early on — for the popular vote. They campaigned for delegates, so they built their strategies on winning a percentage of the votes within any given state. This cumulative popular vote does matter quite a bit more than it does in the Electoral College system in the fall, because these were not winner-take-all states. With the Electoral College, the popular vote is completely skewed, given the huge numbers of people who know their vote won't tip their state one way or another, making the decision whether to vote in California completely different from the decision whether to vote in Ohio.

And yet, the accumulated popular vote seems very important, both in electing the President in the fall and, certainly, in the Clinton-Obama match-up now that we're pitching arguments to the superdelegates. That gives the last few states, including Michigan and Florida if they horn their way back into the process, a whole new dimension of power.

Why are the results so different in the primary and the caucus in Texas on the same day and what does that mean more generally about caucus results?

There are allegations of irregularities in the Texas caucus process:

Clinton aides alleged that Obama allies locked Clinton supporters out of caucus locations and illegally signed up participants before the so-called precinct conventions opened the doors to voters....

The Obama campaign made similar complaints against Clinton supporters throughout the day, illustrating the increasing bitterness between the two Democratic rivals....

More: "The complaints from the Clinton campaign include Obama supporters intimidating voters, giving caucus goers wrong information, and changing people's votes at those caucuses.."

My son, Christopher Althouse Cohen, emails about his own experience caucusing in Austin, Texas:

An unusual thing happened to me on the way to my polling location. I was walking to the school, and there was a group of Obama supporters holding up signs on the front of the school yard. I walked from the side of the yard to the front entrance, but I was wearing a large Hillary button, and one of the Obama supporters ran across the school yard so he could catch me well before I got to the door. He asked if I was here to vote and I, not stopping to talk to him, continued walking but said I already voted and I was going to caucus. It was 6:40 or so and both campaigns advised their supporters in all their mailings to show up early (at 6:30 or 6:45) to avoid potentially being shut out when the doors closed at 7:15. The Obama supporter said, "Oh, well the caucus is at 7:15," implying that I should leave and come back then. If I had done that and tried to show up at 7:15, I would likely have been shut out, because the doors closed then.

I just talked to a Hillary supporter online who said that he was standing in line at 7:15 and that the line was long enough so that he was standing outside, even though they had showed up early. The Obama precinct captain on the inside was demanding that everyone still standing outside, including him, be shut out, and everyone outside started arguing with the Obama supporters on the inside. Eventually, they were let in. He told me that a friend of his was in tears over the phone, because at her location Obama supporters were literally pushing Clinton supporters away from the sign-in sheets that were later used for the official vote tallies.

This news story says that there was a complaint of Obama precinct captains filling in "Obama" after every signature that left the presidential preference spot blank.

The sign-in sheets were confusing. I was unofficially in charge of the sign-in list, though there was an Obama precinct captain standing over me, talking to every single voter at the time, and I can say that a large portion of the people signing in found it hard to read and weren't sure if this was when they actually declared their support for a candidate, so I can see why some people might leave it blank. I'll attach a copy of what the sign-in sheet looked like.

Click image to enlarge.



The box to write your candidate's name is after the phone number spot.

The precinct captain at my location encouraged all the Obama supporters to stay after the sign-in process, but tried to convince me (she perceived me to be the leader of the Clinton supporters) that it wasn't necessary for people to stay after the caucus, that it wouldn't make any difference. After persistently asking many times what was going to happen after the sign-in and what the advantage was to staying, she eventually admitted to me that delegates were being elected that night, in that room, and that we needed 84 delegates and alternates total to represent proportionately the support for each candidate at that convention. I have no idea what would have happened if all the Clinton supporters had left and the Obama supporters got to take over that process. Fortunately, I urged all the Clinton supporters to stay, and we called up Clinton supporters who had already left until we had enough delegates and alternates. This went on until late at night. By then, the Obama supporters had elected each other into all the official positions in that caucus. They outnumbered us in that precinct, so it was no problem for them to do this.

What I've experienced and heard about directly is a very small part of the hundreds of complaints that have come in to the Clinton campaign. What I saw directly might not have technically violated any of the rules, but certainly was enough to potentially trick Clinton supporters into showing up late, and was enough to discourage Clinton supporters from staying to become delegates and alternates.

I left feeling like I could easily see why someone would not want to participate in the caucus. Just knowing how chaotic it can be really discourages people from voting. The difference between the primary and caucus results in Texas can be seen as an experiment that demonstrates the difference in results between those two systems, and much of that difference could be attributable to the shenanigans of Obama's base of fanatics. Right now, with less than 50% of the vote counted in the Texas caucus and 100% reporting in the primary, he's ahead 12 points in the caucus, and she's ahead four points in the primary. That's a 16 point difference in his favor in the same state, on the same day. Of the races he's won, 11 have been caucuses (12 if you count Texas), and she's only won one caucus (Nevada). What would happen to the math if you gave her 16 more points in all the caucuses?

This is the basis for an argument that can be aimed at the superdelegates.

UPDATE: I decided to calculate the numbers of delegates won in caucuses separately from the number of delegates won in primaries. Using the numbers here, I found that Obama has won 290 delegates in caucuses, and Clinton has won 154. That's 65% for Obama and 35% for Clinton. In the primaries, by stark contrast, Obama has won 1072 delegates, and Clinton has won 1058. (Actually, 1058.5 — she won 1.5 delegates in the Americans Abroad primary.) That's 50% to 50%. You need to go to decimals to show the Obama percentage lead in the primaries: 50.3% to 49.7%.

I don't know what you want to do with these numbers in combination with the stories of irregularities in the caucus process, but it's certainly interesting! And since the candidates are going to spend much of the spring and summer making their case to the superdelegates, I think this is ripe raw material. On the primaries, they are virtually even. The big Obama lead was accomplished through the caucus process. Of course, you can't exclude the people of the states that chose their delegates by caucus, but the more evidence Hillary Clinton can amass to show that the people of those states were not properly counted, the more she can explain away his lead in the pledged delegates and justify independent decisionmaking by the superdelegates.

Clinton can't win on pledged delegates.

But can she still somehow win? Howard Fineman explains:



And, you know, I didn't set out to attack Keith Olbermann again, but...

ADDED: Josh Marshall has this:

Now, Fineman is something of a paragon of the mainstream media. So his comments probably raise some suspicion among some readers.

A paragon of what?

But this is a pretty straightforward mathematical question. Doesn't really matter what Fineman or either campaigns say [sic]. Folks paying close attention are as likely to accurately predict the outcomes as the folks in the campaign. So is this true? Is a pledged delegate win for Clinton no longer a realistic possibility?

AND: Is "pledged delegate" the new term for the elected delegates, to go along with the transition from "superdelegate" to "automatic delegate"?

In a sign that the spin war over the significance of super-delegates is underway in earnest, Harold Ickes told assorted Hillary supporters on a private conference call yesterday that the campaign wants them to start referring to super-delegates as "automatic delegates," according to someone on the call.

The person I spoke to paraphrases Ickes, who is spearheading Hillary's super-delegate hunt, this way: "We're no longer using the phrase super delegates. It creates a wrong impression. They're called automatic delegates. Because that's what they are."

"Pledged delegate" sounds confusing to me, because I've heard plenty of talk about how superdelegates were pledging to vote for one candidate or another.

"Not many 21-year-olds start their Monday with a personal breakfast with Chelsea Clinton, as Rae did this morning at the student union..."

But Rae is someone we call a "superdelegate," and Chelsea is someone we call a... uh... whatever they tell us we're allowed to call her... whatever nice people say about the nice people who are doing whatever they can to close their grip on the most powerful position in the world.

Obama's big night: "We won North, we won South, we won in between."

Obama wins Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana. Wide margins everywhere. And — as the quote above says — impressive geographic distribution. Those who would point to Hillary Clinton's consistent lead in the national polls need to remember that the Electoral College determines who wins in the end, and extra votes in California and New York are useless. And neither is popularity in states that will surely go Republican in any close race.

Here's an interactive Electoral College map. You'll see the swing states are beige, and you can pick a year and see who won the various states in past elections. Now, here's a map showing which states Obama and Clinton have won so far. Obama has strong appeal — or Hillary is unappealing — in the nation's midsection. Is a picture of Obama's electability emerging?

We were just talking last night about what the superdelegates can fairly do with their power. One argument is that they must vote to produce the result that would obtain if there were no superdelegates.

But isn't it fair for them to look at who can take the party to victory in the end? Isaac Chotiner argues:

Think of it like this: you are a superdelegate or party boss. You have been undecided but now must choose between two candidates with roughly equal numbers of delegates. Most of all, you want to win in November, which is now only three months away. And while one of your two choices is consistently beating the Republican nominee in polls, the other is consistently losing.

Chotiner hasn't gotten to the point where he sees that it's the Electoral College that matters, but his main idea is that superdelegates will be influenced by data about who's more likely to beat the Republican nominee.

Yesterday, I linked to Chris Bowers, who made this threat:

If the Democratic Party does not nominate the candidate for POTUS that the majority (or plurality) of its participants in primaries and caucuses want it to nominate, then I will quit the Democratic Party... [If the] "super" delegates nominate someone for POTUS other than the person who received the most support during Democratic primaries and caucuses, then I fail to see any reason to continue participating in the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party is not a democratic institution, then to hell with the Democratic Party.

Well, he sounds angry, but what exactly is the standard?

A 1% lead or more in pledged delegates from all 50 states and every territory. If it falls in between the plus or minus 1% range, I'll cut some lack. Otherwise, none.

So, fine, he's not looking at a national poll or going on the numbers of voters/caucus-goers. This shows some sensitivity toward the electoral map. But he's not taking into account any subtleties of who has support in the states that will be hard-fought in the general election. He throws in the territories, which have no electoral votes, and he doesn't have a good way — as far as I can figure out — to deal with the botched process in the big swing states of Michigan and Florida.

It seems to me that the superdelegates are in a position to account for some complex considerations of democracy as it plays out in our peculiar electoral process. The only reason to lock the superdelegates into a formula the way Bowers wants is that you don't trust them to think in a sophisticated way about legitimate factors. You're afraid of the politics that will go on behind the scenes. I understand that fear, but so will the superdelegates. The check on behind-the-scenes deals and corruption is that they will know the people will be hypervigilant and easily outraged.

ADDED: Here's the way Barack Obama puts it:

My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates from the most voters in the country, that it would be problematic for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters. I think it is also important for superdelegates to think about who will be in the strongest position to defeat John McCain in November and who will be in the strongest position to ensure that we are broadening the base, bringing people who historically have not gotten involved in politics into the fold.

See? He's pushing a subtle, multi-factored approach that serves him well. I assume Mrs. Clinton will do the same. The linked article quotes her saying:

Superdelegates are, by design, supposed to exercise independent judgment. But, of course, if Senator Obama and his campaign continue to push this position, which is really contrary to what the definition of a superdelegate has historically been, I will look forward to receiving the support of Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry.

Ha ha. It's an old quote. (Both Kennedy and Kerry have declared their support for Obama.) That was mean! Anyway, I look forward to seeing how she puts it to adapt to the changing circumstances.

ADDED: I misread the Clinton quote, which isn't old. It's a sound witticism.