Fast forward 8 years: Clinton campaign surrogate Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana showed up on yesterday on CNN's "Late Edition" offering the assertion that Hillary Clinton is actually leading the Democratic primary because the states she's won carry the most electoral college votes (Clinton's 219 to Obama's 202, respectively).
Reason's Dave Weigel also notes the electoral college double standard.
The conservative Hot Air takes apart Bayh's logic:
Bayh’s point is stupid, not only because many of the big states where she beat Obama will go blue in November no matter who the nominee is but because, as Jay Cost notes, Democratic primary voters aren’t the same as general election voters.While MyDD's Todd Beeton says the Clinton camp should use a different line of argument to make their case:
A far more compelling argument to superdelegates, I would think, is to constantly remind them about Michigan and Florida. Not because they're "two of the big four" necessarily but rather because had they moved to legal dates they would have represented two additional early Clinton wins, likely big ones, and the mere fact that Obama would have had to compete there would have meant fewer resources for him to expend in other states.
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Comments
The points about Florida, Michigan, and Clinton's hypothetical lead in primary Electoral College votes are not well taken.
However, her previous stance on getting rid of the 18th-century-state-of-the-art notion/now total nonsense Electoral College does make total sense. In the 21st century, we should be deciding these major issues through direct popular voting (and, if we're intelligent, through doing it over the Internet). All Democrats should have raised their voices in outrage over the stealing of the 2000 election through this un-democratic (not even representative) fraud. It's still not too late to do so, though it is too late for this election.
Posted by: chinshihtang
| March 25, 2008 11:10 AM
The electoral college projections strongly favor Hillary, both as a Democratic primary contender, and in any matchup with McCain. The general election is much closer, nearly tied.
I explain this in detail here:
http://americanexpatintexas.blogspot.com/2008/03/electoral-math-favors-clinton.html
Posted by: American Expat in Texas
| March 25, 2008 5:03 PM
There is no "double standard" here. The question of whether the means of electing the president ought to be changed (e.g., abandoning the electoral college) is entirely different from what will be necessary to win the 2008 presidential election. Neither Obama, nor McCain, nor Clinton gets to choose how the votes tallied this November and it is disingenuous to suggest that a Clinton's campaign should focus on anything but on how the election will actually be held.
Posted by: LSF
| March 28, 2008 11:30 PM
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