The Myth of Clinton’s Popular Vote Lead

By Paul Rogat Loeb -

Given the disappointment of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America’s first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama’s win is illegitimate the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton’s voters embrace that story that “a man took it away from a woman,” denying her a victory she rightly deserved, they’re at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and the get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That’s why it’s so unfortunate that Clinton continues to claim that “we are winning the popular vote.” Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has spoken about the need for the party to come together.

Look at Clinton’s math. She leads only if you give her 328,000 votes for the Soviet-style Michigan election, while giving Obama zero for not being on the ballot. And we count her full Florida margin, though Obama couldn’t campaign there and do what he did in state after state by erasing all or most of once-massive Clinton leads once he began to campaign.

But Clinton needs more than claim Michigan and Florida to get her alleged lead. She also has to discard the caucuses of Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and my own state of Washington, where a record quarter million people turned out to participate. Had our delegates been determined by a primary, Obama’s margin would have actually been larger. If he’d gotten the same vote share as then less demographically receptive state of Oregon and the same percentage of voters turned out, he’d have had a margin of 187,000 votes. Yet our votes don’t count either way under Clinton’s math. She disappears them down the memory hole of history in an argument that invents reality as much as her earlier story about running the gauntlet of Bosnian sniper fire, or her recent claim that her husband Bill won the nomination in June, even though his only competition, Paul Tsongas, had dropped out months before..

If the media corrected this, it would be less of a problem, but they haven’t, or at least not in the same stories where they repeat her claim. The AP story in my local Seattle newspaper reported Clinton’s claim without question, saying only that it included contested Florida and Michigan votes and excluded the Iowa caucuses. An otherwise excellent New York Times story included not even the slightest corrections or caveats. Neither mentioned that polls actually have Obama doing marginally better in Michigan than Clinton. They also didn’t explore the impact of roughly 60,000 Democratic voters who crossed over in Michigan to vote Republican, many of whom were participating in an effort by liberal bloggers, anticipating Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” campaign, where they encouraged Democrats to vote for Mitt Romney to continue the Republican blood-letting. Had these crossovers all voted for Uncommitted, Clinton wouldn’t have even gotten a majority in that uncontested race.

Clinton’s popular vote argument also ignores that this wasn’t how the rules were set up, and that if they had been, Obama would have made time, following the Iowa victory that made voters take him seriously, to have made more than three brief visits to California and one to New York, given the size of those states.

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she’s shattering whatever fragile ceasefire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters stay home, come November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the media and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.PaulLoeb.org

The Difference is John McCain Asked for this…

With respect to the Reverend Wright controversy, I don’t believe it was fair to equate the views of the Reverend with those of Barack Obama’s. And I don’t post the video below as a tit-for-tat, I post it because I believe that there is a difference between what occurred between Barack Obama and his pastor and what is and has occurred between John McCain and those radicals on the “Religious Right.”

The key difference between Barack Obama and John McCain is that Obama didn’t invite his religion into the public eye by strutting some self-purported holy man millionaire up on stage. Barack Obama left his religion where it belonged, as his own personal and private business outside of the public view. Reverend Wright and the comments he made were thrust, out of context and into the public arena so that someone could earn political points (which begs the question of just who was the original source of that story).

Conversely, it was no one but John McCain who brought religion into his campaign. It didn’t just start at a Cincinnati campaign rally with his introduction of “Pastor” Rod Parsley as, and this is a direct quote, “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide,” it started years ago when McCain recognized that he needed to pander to the power-base that the “Religious Right” occupied in the Republican Party in order to clear one of the major gates down the path of the nomination. McCain hasn’t just sucked up to Parsley, he’s stooped down to kiss Pat Robertson’s radical heinie and he’s had to stretch his pucker to wrap around the enormous dairy aire of the late Jerry Falwell, even despite his own inclinations to the contrary.

“Governor Bush swung far to the Right and sought out the base support of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Those aren’t the ideas that I think are good for the Republican Party.”

- John McCain, 2000

Ya gotta wonder about a guy who seems like he’d kiss up to anyone or bend and break his own principles just so that he can become president.

“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

- Pastor John Hagee, September 18, 2006

“I’m very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement today. He has been the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement in many areas…”

- John McCain, Feb 27, 2008

I mean, this isn’t just typical political maneuvering or a yes or no vote on a piece of legislation that can be taken out of context later on. The problem for the “straight talk express” is that in the past he has made some pretty clear statements about what he’s thought about these types of men and yet now, when it’s politically expedient, he’s not only willing to share the same stage with them, he even publicly pronounces them as “moral compasses.”

“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.”

- John McCain, February 28, 2000

Do you really want a guy as our president who longs for power so much that he seems like he’ll do anything to attain it?

Do you really want a guy like that controlling our armed forces? Want an example of what that looks like? Just ask John McCain in 2000, he would have told you to that you need look no further than the presidency of George W. Bush.

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