{"id":15610,"date":"2008-05-21T09:51:15","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T13:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15610.html"},"modified":"2008-05-21T09:51:15","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T13:51:15","slug":"going-down-swinging-in-the-wrong-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/going-down-swinging-in-the-wrong-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"Going down swinging, in the wrong direction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on the last item<\/a>, the Clinton campaign has a variety of reasons for hanging around and keeping the Democratic race going, some more compelling than others. In the meantime, though, the campaign’s worst arguments<\/a> do little to build up goodwill within the party.<\/p>\n

If I’m not mistaken Terry McAuliffe just announced two new goalposts.<\/p>\n

1. Hillary has gotten more votes and delegates since March 4th.<\/p>\n

2. Hillary has gotten more votes in a nomination race than anyone in history. “Hillary Clinton has now received more votes than any candidate ever running for president in a primary.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s true; he really did, on Fox News no less:<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

There’s just no reason for this. Superdelegates are generally going to be sophisticated enough to dismiss this as nonsense, and rank-and-file Dems in the three remaining primaries (Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota) are unlikely to be moved by the arguments.<\/p>\n

All McAuliffe is doing with efforts like these is undermining the campaign’s credibility and tarnishing its name. The focus, it seems to me, should be on going out on a high note, and McAuliffe is making that harder, not easier.
\n
\nOn the first new goalpost, McAuliffe is probably right. Since March 4, there have only been five contests. Clinton won three (Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana); Obama won two (Oregon and North Carolina). I haven’t run the numbers, but if McAuliffe believes Clinton has won more votes and pledged delegates in these five primaries, I’m certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n

I don’t, however, have the foggiest idea why this matters. Why are these five contests more significant than the 50 or so primaries and caucuses before March 4? (For that matter, this newly-discovered metric appears to exclude superdelegates from the equation altogether, many of whom have moved to Obama in recent weeks.)<\/p>\n

On the second new goalpost, history is a funny thing. There are more Americans than ever before, and this is the longest primary fight (which means more voters have participated). But that doesn’t much matter — FDR got 27 million votes in 1940, while George McGovern got 29 million in 1972. Does this make McGovern’s performance impressive?<\/p>\n

Even the effort to count popular votes in this primary is a fool’s errand. As Josh noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Even if you change the rules and fully seat Michigan and Florida and count them for the popular vote totals and<\/i> don’t count any portion of the Michigan “uncommitted” (which were understood to be for Obama) vote for Obama, Hillary is still<\/i> behind in the popular vote total. The only way she moves ahead in popular vote is if you do all that and<\/i> don’t count four of the caucus states. <\/p>\n

Some stuff is just too ridiculous to let pass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t mention this to pile on, but rather because it seems McAuliffe’s argument is so counterproductive. Atrios noted<\/a>, “[I]t isn’t trivial and it’s destroying the respect I once had for a group of people. It’s weird, really, having in some sense started my political life defending the Clintons and now being rather fed up with them. I’m not important, but I’m not alone.”<\/p>\n

It’s more than just foolish rhetoric from an overeager campaign cheerleader. As Scott Lemieux noted<\/a>, arguments like McAuliffe’s “undermine the legitimacy of the Democratic nominee.”<\/p>\n

If there was any significant chance that she could win, that might be acceptable. If she even had a credible argument that she was ahead in the popular vote — one anyone would have accepted before the nomination, without knowing who it would benefit — that would be a different issue. But to send flacks to rile up other Democrats against Obama under these circumstances is a disgrace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My sense is this will all be over soon, and the antics of various campaign spokespersons will probably be forgotten. But I also get the sense that McAuliffe’s efforts, among others, will leave many with an unpleasant taste in their mouths. When people look back on the Clinton campaign once the dust has settled, I suspect they’ll have wanted to do more to enhance the senator’s reputation and stature, and McAuliffe is doing the opposite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on the last item, the Clinton campaign has a variety of reasons for hanging around and keeping the Democratic race going, some more compelling than others. In the meantime, though, the campaign’s worst arguments do little to build up goodwill within the party. If I’m not mistaken Terry McAuliffe just announced two new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}