The problem with the Electoral Vote argument

[woolldog]

The Clintons have been floating this argument recently, implying that if we were choosing the nominee by the electoral votes of states won, Hillary would be ahead right now.

The big problem I see with that is that if those were the rules, if the nominee were chosen according to the electoral votes of the states won, then Obama wouldn't have followed the strategy that he has so far. He would've devised a different strategy!

Obama's strategy was tailor made to extract the most delegates, because that's how the nomination race is decided and how it's always been decided. That's why he focused on small states. That's why he focused on "running up the score" in caucus states. That's why he followed a 50-state strategy, while Clinton focussed on the big states and ignored so many others.

To switch metrics towards the end of the race because that metric no longer favors you is dishonest. It also punishes Obama for running his campaign in a way that the rules intended. Obama seems to have gotten the point behind the rules. Clinton, in complaining about how she's ahead in electoral votes and "big states" obviously hasn't.

[Growler]

1. K&R

[tabasco]

2. Another problem with it is that it doesn't make a damn bit of sense!

It is stupid as can be. It assumes Obama loses all the states he lost in the Democratic primary!

That's just plain stupid, there's no other way to say it.

[hughee99]

3. Exactly...

Hillary beat Obama in CA, but Obama still got 800k more votes than McCain and almost as many as were cast for all repukes. The Democrat will win in CA, regardless of which one is the nominee. Same thing happened in Ohio (a swing state), where Obama beat McCain by 300k votes and had about as many as were cast in the whole repuke primary. It's not a good argument for the electability of one over the other in the GE.

[Mooney]

4. The problem with the Electoral Vote argument

is that it doesn't work in the general. Hillary, like Obama, carried states that won't go blue in the general, like Texas and Arizona. The Electoral Vote argument is the same as saying that if you overshoot the basket in basketball that you should still get the points because it would be really great to throw a ball that far in football.

This is moot anyway --- the HRC camp doesn't actually believe their own argument. They're just throwing one desperate, lame rationale after another at the wall in the hope that one will stick.