This report from The New York Times demonstrates one of many reasons why Hillary Clinton has probably lost the Democratic nomination as well as showing serious problems in her political skills.
Clinton is still claiming to be leading in the popular vote, despite this claim having been debunked multiple times. Clinton’s math here is as bad as Obama’s math in claiming to have been in fifty-seven states (although it must have felt like that). At least Obama isn’t repeating his mathematically preposterous claim as Clinton persists in doing with hers.
To claim a popular vote lead Clinton includes the votes in Michigan and Florida which were not sanctioned by the party. Not only wasn’t Obama on the ballot in Michigan, but write in votes for Obama were not counted. Without counting Michigan, Obama already has a lead in the popular vote.
Clinton’s math is also invalid as it discounts the caucus states where Obama won decisively. Turn out in such states is lower due to the structure of the vote, and some states don’t even report vote totals.
Besides being incorrect, Clinton’s argument is also irrelevant. The Democratic nomination is determined based upon delegate totals, not the popular vote. Back when they had a lead among delegates, the Clinton campaign insisted that the nomination was being determined by winning delegates. Obama played by the rules in effect and won based upon those rules. If the rules called for a nomination based upon the popular vote then Obama would have run his campaign differently to maximize the popular vote as opposed to delegate victories.
The problem for Clinton is that only her own supporters are fooled into believing that her argument makes any sense at all. The superdelegates continue to move towards Obama. Her argument on the popular vote certainly has not helped, and might be doing some harm. This argument highlights two major faults in Hillary Clinton, first that she is dishonest and secondly that she does not play by the rules. Clinton’s chances might be better if she managed to overcome such perceptions of her rather than providing more evidence that they are true.
How many Operation Chaos Limbaugh Dittoheads in Hillary’s popular vote total?
PLEASE stop this! Like everyone else, you talk about the Michigan and Florida results results as if the only problem were that they were not “sanctioned” by the party–ignoring the fact that BEFORE anyone voted, everyone said that these votes WOULD NOT, DID NOT count. How many Democrats did not vote because they did not believe these were real primaries?? To count these votes would be a travesty.
Ditto what john said
lol
Skeptica,
This post is not intended to go over the many reasons why Michigan and Florida should not count. Of course one reason is that voters did not think the vote should count, and therefore the results are not a valid assessment of the will of the voters in these states. However the fact that the voters believed the votes would not count stems directly from the fact that these primaries were not sanctioned by the party.