The Problem with Hillary Clinton’s Electoral Reasoning
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Related subjects: J.E. Robertson, Opinion, U.S. Politics, Vote 2008 Comments Off
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a force to be reckoned with, a political entity with a nationwide support network that outstrips nearly all rivals and most past icons, with the added weight of her husband’s legacy and immense popularity among key constituencies. But, she has made her case for the presidency at a time when another Democrat has achieved even greater success and has rallied hundreds of thousands of new voters, and at present, she is running second, with one day to go.
The Clinton campaign has continuously argued that she is the “candidate to beat”, that her candidacy in the fall of 2008 is “inevitable”, that the nation “deserves” her, and that she is “destined” to lead. The problem is, her campaign has also shown, with acrobatic feats of clarity, how untrue much of that line of reasoning really is. She has been shown to exaggerate her own experience, to place herself “under sniper fire” when there was none, to allow her surrogates to play to racist tendencies in some constituencies, and to switch her reasoning on war and peace with refined aplomb.
Now, she argues that her victory over Obama in the primary season is the only acceptable outcome because she “will have won the most votes — more than anyone in the history of the primary process”, despite the fact that with two states of very small population remaining, Obama actually has “more [votes] than anyone in the history of the primary process”, has won a majority of pledged delegates (which cannot be reversed), and has won 33 of the first 51 contests (Clinton 18).
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She argues that she can win in rural areas where 20% of voters cite “race” as a deciding factor in casting their vote, though Democrats may have a chance of taking back some of the south, if Obama can add to his 91% support among African Americans in some southern states, the votes of educated, moderate, independent and antiwar voters of other ethnic backgrounds, including “white”.
Obama has won in the “heartland”, in the Pacific, along the eastern seaboard, across the deep south, in the Rocky mountains, in deeply conservative “red” states, and in the Pacific northwest and Alaska. He has won —as has Clinton— in small states and big states, in liberal and conservative states, and he also dominated the caucuses, where voters stand up for their candidate and try to persuade those who support other candidates to switch sides.
What about the mathematics of 33 out of 51 contests? Is Hillary still arguing that she should win the delegate count by party-insider “superdelegates” switching their vote to Clinton, because —as was said of the ill-fated Kerry 2004 campaign— she is “more electable”? Is she arguing this despite not leading in popular vote or delegate count, despite Obama showing stronger numbers against McCain in recent national polls?
There is an element of determination about the Clinton campaign that is laudable, and her successes and her appeal should be recognized. But one will be forgiven by history, it seems, for pointing out that she has repeatedly said she will back the party’s candidate, that she will drop out by June 3rd, or that she will “fight on to Denver”, that she will bow out gracefully, or that she will never surrender. She asks voters to trust her experience and consistency, though she has changed her story about both experience, electoral process and whose votes should be counted, in nearly every single contest where she found herself with differing interests.
In New York City, where accusations that party officials (with no official link to the Clinton campaign) erased pro-Obama votes still have to be resolved, the Clinton campaign argued that while all votes should be counted, it was not clear that Obama actually garnered any votes in densely populated predominantly African American communities where polls indicated he had support. It was argued that “zero” votes for a major candidate leading in national vote totals was not an impossibility, though statistically and historically, it is as close to impossible as one can get.
In Michigan, where voters were not given the opportunity to vote for any other candidate, Clinton argues that all votes for herself should be counted, while nothing should be done to resolve the fact that more than half of Michigan Democrats told pollsters they would have preferred to vote for someone else.
The problem with Clinton’s electoral reasoning is that her argument in favor of the “one-voter/one-vote” doctrine is undermined by the inconsistent application of the standard: her campaign has made an argument that works out much more closely to one-voter/one-vote, so long as that vote is for me.
This may be an unfair assessment of her actual ideals, but it is a very real logical problem with the arguments put forth by her campaign for why she should be nominated by superdelegates over the actual decision of the voter-based delegate process in the Democratic party. She is making much of late-come victories whose weight —while not purely symbolic— is not enough to sway the balance of the nominating process in her favor.
Obviously, if it were entirely impossible for Clinton to achieve an overall delegate count that could justify her being nominated, she would not continue, to the detriment of her party’s chances. And she has a right to make her case, and it is not clear that her party is suffering long-term damage as a result of her persisting. But, she must weigh the impact of such an unlikely reversal, decided by party insiders, and in which she would benefit from at least one, if not two primaries (Michigan and Florida) which violated party rules.
She may be doing damage to Obama’s chances of winning the fall, or she may be strengthening him as a candidate, by subjecting him to such an intense primary contest, raising one after another apparent flaw that voters should consider. But she may also be damaging her own chances of winning, should she become the nominee, due to the method and the nature of the arguments she is making in order to make her case.
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