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

North Carolina Votes for Barack Obama

May 6th is upon us and the missus and I cast our vote today and I learned something interesting about Wake Forest, North Carolina. You see, I’ve never voted in a primary before because when I lived in NY it was only possible to vote if you registered with a party affiliation. So I was a little confused when the election official asked me if I wanted a Democrat, Republican or Unaffiliated ballot. After figuring out that the unaffiliated ballot was basically just a non-partisan judicial voting ballot both the wife and I asked for the Democratic ballot.

Apparently so did 268 and 269 other people!

In fact, the election official exclaimed that the Democratic ballot was the one that “most people were asking for.” After making my selection for Barack Obama, I walked over to the machine and placed my ballot in the slot. The red LCD readout displayed “362.” So if I was holding the 269th Democratic ballot and there had been a total of 362 ballots by 10:30 a.m. that meant that less than 93 people (just 25%) had requested the Republican ballot - IN A SMALL TOWN THAT OVERWHELMINGLY VOTES REPUBLICAN!

Very interesting I thought…. And that’s not counting the early votes that have already been cast, likely from those that know about such things, such as the partisan or the most highly educated. Hmmm?

Things seem to be looking good. Who knows, while this effect could be because McCain has essentially clinched the Republican nomination, the possibility exists that maybe this is going to happen all over the country on November 4th, 2008?

My prediction is that when the story is told about the general election it is going to be all about turnout and Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, definitely not John McCain and especially not George W. Bush, is the reason why people are being motivated to the polls in record numbers.

Whatever happens, the one thing that I’m absolutely sure of today is that the story is NOT going to be about John McCain or the Republican Party.

Things are looking good!

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