"Put Up or Shut Up on Anti-Math Argument" ("math drinks your milkshake.")

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Sun Mar-09-08 02:06 PM
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"Put Up or Shut Up on Anti-Math Argument" ("math drinks your milkshake.")

Put Up or Shut Up on Anti-Math Argument

by PocketNines
Sun Mar 09, 2008 at 11:02:22 AM PDT

Thomas Jefferson once said:

"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism."

On Wednesday, Chris Matthews flung this quote - "the majority of a single vote is as sacred as if unanimous" - at Terry McAuliffe three consecutive times before asking him if he knew that the founder of the Democratic Party had said that. To watch McAuliffe stammer and hem and haw was revealing. This principle is the Achilles heel for all their bluster. They have no real comeback.

The essence of McAuliffe's feeble reply was something you hear now all the time being parroted on the teevee:

PocketNines's diary :: ::
"Barack Obama can't get to 2025 without the superdelegates."

The implication goes, since he cannot do this without the superdelegates, he can't be the winner. If he can't be the winner, he is flawed. And if he is flawed, the superdelegates shouldn't vote for him. Pretty nice circle there, eh?

Add that to the fact that most people don't get themselves particularly bogged down in the numerical details, and you have a nice little environment to kick sand everywhere, create confusion, and get people to think, "Who knows? I don't know what they're saying with all this pledged delegate superdelegate math talk. Maybe she can still win." In that environment you even get stridently bluffing diaries railing about math being BS, and all 50 elections really being "a party building process that picks only some of the delegates for the convention."

And it is time to call that argument out.

Fact #1: The majority of the 719 superdelegates have endorsed, and nobody is arguing that Obama's endorsers will defect.

Only 284 superdelegates have not publicly backed a candidate or indicated how they will vote. Of the remainder, Clinton has 244, Obama 202. All we have seen is Clinton supers defecting to Obama, not the other way around. Something being possible is not an argument that it is in any way realistic.

Where is the legitimate argument that Obama's endorsers will abandon him? What is the rationale for that abandonment? Something Howard Wolfson says to Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe about Obama not being tough enough? Does it just boil down to "I have faith that those who publicly backed Obama will decide to adopt my anti-Obama perception?"

Out with it. What is your argument based on real evidence?

Fact #2: Nobody is offering evidence that it is the intention of the superdelegates to reverse the pledged delegate winner.

Time after time after time after time, reporters who are talking to these superdelegates come back and report that they will NOT take away the nomination from someone with a clear pledged delegate lead.

And every single report has gone pretty much this way: We, the superdelegates, will not reverse the decision of the states. That so many reporters are coming back with exactly the same message is striking.

And yet, the anti-math railers NEED superdelegate willingness to reverse the pledged delegate winner with their "anything can happen" and "Barack Obama can't get 2025 without superdelegates." Without forwarding a cogent argument about why this will happen, when every piece of evidence in front of says exactly the opposite will happen, we cannot take these people seriously.

Here are the other relevant facts.

Despite the ultra-sloppy delegate trackers at CNN and the like (which still haven't updated erroneous numbers from CA, for example), Obama leads 1392-1236 right now. If you take Obama's spreadsheet at its word (and it has pretty much nailed every prediction with the exception of times where it underestimated its wins), then Obama gets 303 more the rest of the way (to Clinton's 296).

Going to the convention, that'd be 1695-1532. That's a decisive 5% margin of victory. In the context of recent history, that number looks small. We are used to seeing blowouts because it's a rarity that two powerful, well-financed candidates find themselves in a protracted fight for the nomination. But 5% is still a decisive election margin, especially compared with Jefferson's 1-vote standard.

Next, you realize that the 76 add-on delegates are likely to split with an Obama edge. Being ultra conservative with the math, now we're up to 1733-1570 (on a 38-38 split). The add-ons will be known before the convention.

From 1733, Obama only needs 292 to go over the top and get his 2025. Add the unrebutted 202 public superdelegate endorsements, and 1935 is where he sits.

That means he needs 90 more delegates. He can get these through a combination of
(1) doing better than a split in the add-ons, which is likely,
(2) doing better than his pledged delegate spreadsheet's projected +7 the rest of the way, and
(3) attracting endorsements from the 284 undeclared non-add-on superdelegates (90 of 284 is merely 31.7%).

There is this logical fallacy out there that by being educated on the math, you are no longer focused on winning future states. Or fighting to the end. Or that the justification of your candidacy might somehow be math, as Chris Cilizza goofily posited on Tim Russert's MSNBC show.

That's silly. The next state is Mississippi on Tuesday and you take them one state at a time. It's not as if Obama would be going on vacation the minute he wraps up the nomination. He'd be campaigning fast and furious against John McCain. No Obama supporters are thinking their work is done.

It's a silly argument by people masking a giant bluff behind a lecture. And those people haven't shown any hint of making arguments as to why Obama's superdelegates will defect or why the superdelegates will reverse the pledged delegate winner.

And so it's time to put up or shut up with those arguments.

In the meantime, math drinks your milkshake.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/9/122733/7239/28/472895