Queasy super delegates?
Colin wins the prize for making a sharp point with fewest words. Still wrong, Colin, but I salute your brevity.
To Nick Payne, I would suggest that the super delegates are beginning to feel a bit queasy - if, as seems increasingly likely, they are called upon to sit on party democracy. But that, of course, was the purpose of the super delegates so maybe they ought to have the courage of their convictions... It is odd, is it not, that these systems are put in place and then repudiated when they work as they are intended to work?
John, I think that answers one of your questions as well - and the point you make about Hillary being Royal is maybe one of her biggest underlying problems.
I like Peter Piperrino’s point that New York and California might suffer the political equivalent of a fashion disaster by discovering they picked the wrong side... Surely the nation should rally round to ensure THIS IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!
I suspect the with Huckabee crying foul, it would seem with good reason, might come down to a misunderstanding on the part of the Washington state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser.
He thought this was your father’s sleepy primary season: maybe they don’t get the papers up in the north-west. He did not realise, in other words, that this extraordinary season is about COUNTING (metaphorically and literally) and taking the counting seriously.
2008 is about re-birth on both sides of the aisle and woe-betide anyone who gets in front of the bandwagon. Huckabee will not win but his supporters need to be heard. This is not the year for voter suppression or vote suppression. Nor is it a year for prediction, as makes horribly clear.
I do think polls get a bad press though: post-New Hampshire it was as if they had deliberately misled people. They did not: they were wrong and the dedicated folks who run them will come up with better models for the future.
Americans are often told - and Mitt Romney appears to believe - that Europe is post-religious. He will be cheered no doubt by the Archbishop of Canterbury's : a position by Christopher Hitchens. Seems to me this spat should give pause to those Huckafundamentalists who seriously think the Bible should supplant the US constitution. Secular government is surely a blessing.
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> Secular government is surely a blessing.
Indeed, Mr Webb--sparing us from even greater troubles than we have now on both sides of the pond.
It is always physically possible to prostitute a noble concept, though. Disaster is averted by non-ESPOUSAL of any particular religion, yes. But APPEASEMENT brings those disastrous results just the same.
Why, do you think, Western European governments (and to a less extent, those in Eastern Europe, America, Japan and Singapore) are overwhelmingly afraid of being labelled by one side as 'racists' or 'religious oppressors'--
1 to the point of demanding concessions from everyone else, and
2 to the point of bending laws for the sake of appeasement in the name of 'social harmony'?
I am by no means as certain as you are that pollsters don't set out to deliberately mislead people (if anything, there is substantial evidence that they do). More to the point, journalists write inaccurate and misleading stories about polls of one sort or another every day of the week. Most of your journo colleagues seem to have but a feeble grasp of probability and statistics, and write stories betraying their lack of understanding. For example, the results of most polls are presented at 95% confidence, but rarely do journalists bother to explain what this means -- or even to mention it in their stories. Yet this is a fairly crucial piece of any story about opinion polling, since it means that there is one chance in twenty (!) that the results do not reflect the population as a whole, just due to the size of the sample. (This does not even get into the various biases introduced by pollsters' sampling techniques and survey construction.)
Clinton: 12 states, 1,136 delegates
Obama: 19 states, 1,108 delegates
Correct me if I'm wrong but this figures are if we count all the states that have voted so far, right? But with the Democrats saying that the votes in some states dont count as they have voted beforehand, if we take those votes from the accountability, isnt Obama already in front of Mrs. Clinton?
Use the term "secular" government sparingly. The Archbishop of Canterbury does have a seat in The House of Lords and The Queen is Head of the Church of England.
My best shot at why this contest is so fascinating for a Brit is this:
Our political system, by hiving off the Head of State job and all the 'symbol of the nation' baggage that goes with it, opens the door to No. 10 to some deeply uninspiring types. And our current PM is certainly one of them- he is bright, and therefore not uninspiring in the way that John Major was in the '90s- mediocrity in its purest form. But Gordon Brown completely lacks the common touch, so his rhetoric will always sound hollow, even if he means it most sincerely, poor guy.
Yet with all the dangers and challenges facing the world- from our crumbling local communities to the dwindling energy supplies and rising flood-waters -inspirational leadership, plain-spoken, provoking and pulling in the young, the disinterested and the disaffected, is exactly what we need most right now.
Call it desperation if you like, but for the first time in my adult life I find myself looking to the USA, hoping for something that my own system doesn't look like being able to come up with soon enough.
I struggle to understand quite why people - and you must admit to being equally guilty of doing this yourself Justin - kick up such a fuss about the undemocratic nature of the primary/caucus process.
The political parties are under no legal obligation to select their candidates according to the popular will. As private organisations they could pick whoever they want in as narrow a way as they might like and they only open it up - to various degrees - to the population at large is to make sure they select a candidate with at least some degree of appeal to the voters come the general, so they actually bother to vote for them.
The Michigan and Florida delegations should not, and will not, be involved, but the superdelegates can and should be. Ari Emmanuel, and the rest griping in the Huffington Post, are only doing so because they fear not getting the result they personally find most desirable. If the superdelegates were leaning towards Obama I suspect you would not hear a peep out of 'em.
Thank god Europe is post-religious!
I disagree that super delegates voting to tip the balance in favor of Ms. Clinton in the event that the voter-assigned delegates narrowly favor Mr. Obama is "work[ing] as they are intended to work." My best guess as to the role of the super delegates is that they can tip the balance against a candidate who was popular with the party-line primary and caucus goers, BUT UNELECTABLE FOR THE GENERAL POPULACE. As far as I can tell from the polls, that is not the case with Barack Obama.
Justin-
I've enjoyed reading your blog to see the election process through the eyes of a foreigner. It is amazing to me to see all this coverage of the US presidential race in the foreign press whereas most American probably couldn't tell you how the British PM is elected.
I just came back from voting in my primary and it was heartening to see so many people standing in line to vote. Whoever wins in November, it won't be due to lack of turnout.
"Secular government is surely a blessing."
Actually it was the rational conclusion of the founders of the American nation who realized that any other course would ultimately lead to the tyranny of one religion over all others and an insurmountable obstacle to the democracy they were trying to create. They did not solve every human problem, slavery and discrimination against women were two they left for future generations but freedom of religion and freedom from religion are areas they hit right on the bullseye. And these were by all accounts religious men themselves.
Ok can somebody somewhere link to a reliable source that shows how Huckabee plans to "supplant the US Constitution"? I keep hearing these claims but I've never seen one backed up.
It is odd, is it not, that these systems are put in place and then repudiated when they work as they are intended to work?
Standard left-wing attitude when things don't go their way. Some people still haven't stopped claiming that Gore "really won" in 2000 even though the system operated according to rules which they accepted beforehand and haven't tried to change since. And of course the routine grassroots Labour response to any reporting of their leaders' misdeeds is always "oh well, it's a stupid law anyway" even when it's one their own government brought in.
Justin,
Is there a case, however belatedly in adding the votes/delegates of Michigan and Florida to the overall count?
Mr Obama is very keen to say that the popular vote is what matters, not the superdelegates. I assume he would therefore welcome this addition to make the overall totals more accurate.
Why is it that in other countries, the opinion polls and the exit polls being way out are taken by the media as proof of vote fraud, but in the USA are taken as proof of poor polling, despite massive evidence of lots of irregularities in the voting and counting procedure.
"Americans are often told - and Mitt Romney appears to believe - that Europe is post-religious."
Well, I wouldn't say offten, but yes the Christian right seem to think that shoveing their religion down other's throats will bring them friends and converts-not to mention the US respect and popularity in the world (the latter being most deffinitly more true than the former!!) Hardely the way to go!! Ever wonder why so many wars have been fought over religion? Its because it supposed to be personal!!
The superdelegate system was brought in after McGovern to act as a bulwark to the herd-like voting of the fanatical activists.
If the superdelegates were behind Obama he would not complain (equally true about Clinton when it comes to the causcuses). My own feelings are that it would be better if all states voted on the same day by secret ballot instead of the dragged out process we have now where the media manipulate the proceedings in their own interests.
The longer it goes on for the media the better it is for them as their advertising revenues are increased during a close race.
In my opinion the cult of Obama is a temporary phenomenon that will wilt under the pressure of a full-blown GOP attack. We can already see them readying the ground with these prosecutions in Guantanamo. They are going to wrap themselves in the Stars & Stripes and play on McCain's strengths.
That being said I can see other reasons for supporting McCain - he of all the Republicans is the one who has crossed party lines and reached out to his democratic counterparts. In all honesty I cannot see either Obama or Clinton doing the same. Both are divisive in their own ways. Clinton is a hate figure for the Republicans whilst Obama is, despite the denials, playing the race card for all it is worth, not to mention turning a blind eye to the misogynistic attacks by his surrogates.
I'm afraid I don't share your confidence in the pollsters: it was not so much the New Hampshire contest(which might have been affected by a genuine late swing to Clinton) as the California polling which suggested at the very least a much closer run thing. Then there was nary a poll to found for the contests after Super Tuesday- as if they had assumed all would be done and dusted by then. The only one I did find was for Maine and that had Clinton leading!
The Observer: Clinton is a hate figure for the Republicans whilst Obama is, despite the denials, playing the race card for all it is worth, not to mention turning a blind eye to the misogynistic attacks by his surrogates.
The Observer is correct on all points; the naive, vacuous or misognynistic worship the puffing windbag; the ´óÏó´«Ã½ waves the misogynist banner daily on this blog.
Will we know how our congressman votes his super delegate vote at the convention?
Why are polls so important? Are we to expect them to shape our opinion? If our convictions are secure, what does it matter how far ahead a particular candidate is estimated to be? Will the spectre of your candidate falling behind make you not vote for him or her or even more determined to vote for your choice?
Maybe they're set up to give the bookies research for oddsmaking. Maybe they're just the media's method for "crafting" the vote. Who cares if they're right or wrong? Polls shouldn't affect the outcome. But, we know they probably do. I can only imagine it's because many want to go with a winner--do the popular thing and not necessarily the right thing.
In Utopia, people vote their mind and pollsters tell us who's the best dressed.
I think pollsters try their best by and large. Their job depends on it. Remember the Voter News Service?
They are paid to be right--unlike pundits who are only paid to be entertaining.
Why it is essentially non-constitutional for the U.S. presidency to have evolved into a national messiahship is the central message of Gene Healy's new book, "The Cult of the Presidency." (Cato Inst.)
After reading that book, as I heartily wish all my fellow Americans of voting age would, none would vote for any of the current candidates, realizing that the media have turned the office into a national political high priesthood, and the election process into American Idol.
Where are these fabled religious fundamentalists that supposedly want to replace the Constitution with the Bible? Name me one candidate? You have fallen into the regular European practice of slanderous exaggeration of people of religion in America.
Justin,
What intrigues me is if Hilary Clinton loses this contest to Barack Obama on a narrow share of the total delegate vote, could she have any real legal power to appeal; by means of challenging the exclusion of the Florida and Michigan delegates? I feel that this could get very messy.
The worst case scenario for the Democrats I believe would be a situation where Obama wins the nationwide delegate vote, but Clinton scrapes through to win the party nomination with the larger share of the super-delegates (her husband has a large contacts diary I have been told).
By the way, John Edwards has been 'sitting on the fence' for 2 weeks now...thats got to hurt anybody!
# 5 Andy White: I wouldn't call looking to another country for ideas and insperation "desperation"at all, rather I would call it reassuring and nice, and you need not be ashamed of it. Rest assured that most people around the world, whether they like to admit it or not, do, in fact, look to other countries for an example of the qualities they wish to see displayed in their own countries. Lord knows I am constantly compareing and contrasting the US and UK in terms of universal health care, gun controll, the freedom of vote for certain parties in a given election, and the amount of diplomats we have at our disposal compared to those in the UK. All of the above mentioned things I see as working well-or in some cases, even existant in the UK and most deffinitly want to see them instaled in this country as soon as possible!!
Also,Iwoud caussion against being, in my opinion, be too hard on Brown. After all, he is fighting to improve the afore mentioned challenges in the UK, something our presidencial candidates are fighteing to get in place, and although his speeking style may not be as insperational, his message most certainly is, and one in which, it seems to me, he really believes in. Although I do agree with you that our presidencial candidates (on the Democratic side in particular) are endoubed with the gifts of a wonderful insperational speeking ability, and great reform ideas for our country. It is always interesting and thought pravokeing to hear/read a foreigner's perspective on our elections, especially a positive one, and for that I thank you!
I think a problem with a lot of these polls is that they don't reach people who only have cell phones. That wasn't a problem in the past, but this year that typically younger, busier, cell-phone-only crowd is having a significant impact on the voting. New polling methods which included them would likely give a more accurate picture.
Maybe the polls are wrong because people are lying to the pollsters. People who conduct exit polls are a unique combination of telemarketer and journalist. Telemarketers are universally despised and in America journalists compete with lawyers and politicians for low popularity. (sorry Justin)
Also I might concede to being related to apes but I am not taking them to church with me. I don't live in a disney movie where apes are people to :)
Mr. Webb,
Please tell me you aren't a conspiracy theorist. Have you actually talked to many Huckabee voters (Disclaimer: I'm a McCain supporter, but I'd like to see Huckabee as VP)? Far from wanting a Christian theocracy, they tend to be fiercely patriotic and very proud of the U.S. Constitution and the freedom of religion clause. The ones I know--which are a fair number--believe quite strongly in the "capitalist" model of religious belief--they simply want to vote their consciences, which means they feel most comfortable with someone whom they feel understands their values--it's worth noting that evangelical Christians voted first for Huckabee and second for McCain--and not because Romney was a Mormon, but because McCain had a record of backing his words up with action when it came to moral values, and this despite some pretty scathing things McCain's said about them before.
Sir, please don't talk contemptuously about a constituency that you obviously know little about.
P.S. A "fundamentalist," correctly described, believes basically in leaving the rest of the world to itself. A fundamentalist will not be voting, much less trying to impose Mosaic Law on voters.