Popping the quiff in Texas

Today's big vote in Texas is something of a quantum physics puzzle. The citizens of the Lone Star State will soon pop the quiff and learn whether or not they count!

If Clinton wins, Texas is another big, important state that proves Hillary's mass appeal and electability. If Obama wins, Texas is another meaningless, illegitimate, caucus-tainted sinkhole that's "not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee" anyway. It's Idaho writ large, if you will -- so who really cares about it? Ohio and Rhode Island are the states that matter! :)

(At the moment, of course, in accordance with the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, Texas both counts and doesn't count.)

Anyway, Josh Marshall sums up where things stand:

If the polls bear out, we seem set for a result that will lead to minor or major crowing from the Clinton camp, with a victory in Ohio seeming very likely and at a least a primary popular vote victory in Texas looking like a distinct possibility. The Obama camp will counter, and they'll be right, that judged by the standards of a few weeks ago, these results only amount to Clinton holding on by the skin of her teeth. But the expectations game isn't 'fair'. It's what it is, they're expectations. And there's simply no denying that such an aura of victory has grown up around Obama that losing one or both of these big states (at least the popular vote in Texas, which, remember, also has a caucus that seems likely to bag a lot of delegates for Obama) will be perceived as a very real turnaround.

And yet, look at the delegate counts, or what they seem likely to be. We've run the numbers, and even assuming a very big night for Clinton, she seems unlikely to make more than a small dent in Obama's lead of roughly 150 pledged delegates. Indeed, she could actually do quite well on the popular vote side and end up falling behind a bit further on pledged delegates.

The upshot is that the Clinton campaign may come out of tonight with a major shot in the arm and a round of good press and yet still be in no more realistic a position to win the nomination based on the stubborn tally of delegates.

Sounds about right. But let's wait and see what the voters decide.

Comments

[B. Minich]

Put an end to animal cruelty! Free Schrödinger's cat!

[JT]

We could just let the people vote and quit playing this stupid game. Everyone said she was finished after Iowa and she came back to win New Hampshire. If she wins Ohio and Pennsylvania she'll have won the two largest swing states in the country. I know Florida doesn't count, but she won that state too. I'd be fine with Obama as the democratic candidate but I'm sick of this media coronation party. When did the media turn into a reality TV show? They should just report the news and stop telling us what to think.

[The Media]

Your thoughts are invalid. Please try again.

[David K.]

She won Florida? Of course she won Florida, no one else was on the ballot there!

[Brendan Loy]

Actually David, that was Michigan. The other candidates were on the ballot in Florida. (They tried to withdraw their names, but it was too late.)

Hillary's advantage in Florida wasn't that she was the only major candidate on the ballot, but rather, that (by mutual agreement) nobody campaigned there, and thus Obama didn't have the opportunity to make up the ground that he nearly always makes up when he campaigns in a state, erasing Hillary's early, largely name-recognition-based leads.

The reasons Hillary's "win" in Florida is a nullity are: 1) none of the candidates objected contemporaneously to the DNC's decision to strip Florida of its delegates; 2) that decision conclusively rendered the state's "primary" null and void, utterly without significance in terms of picking the nominee, under the rules that everybody was operating under; and 3) in furtherance of ensuring the point #2 was respective, all the of candidates agreed, in a pledge to the four "early states," not to campaign in Florida (this is particularly ironic since Hillary is now trying to argue that caucus states, which would include Iowa and Nevada -- two of the states to whom the signed the pledged -- don't count as much as "big state" primaries like Florida and Michigan).

Also, read #2 again. The Florida and Michigan "primaries" were intrinsically meaningless beauty contests. Period, full stop, end of discussion.

Those states were stripped in advance of their delegates by the DNC, which is the body charged with deciding such things. Therefore they inherently did not count. Again, stop, the end, goodbye.

Arguing that the "delegates" they "selected" should beat seated at the convention is as legitimate as arguing that the fifteen Obama delegates selected by my stuffed animals at a roundtable meeting in my living room should be seated, because I say so. That's how utterly meaningless the Florida and Michigan "primaries" were.

Hillary doesn't get to snap her fingers and change the duly agreed-upon rules just because she thinks it's "just" (i.e., it benefits her). The rules are the rules. And what's more, those rules were adopted specifically to prevent Florida and Michigan from influencing the nomination process with their too-early, breaking-the-rules "primaries." To seat their delegates would be to prevent that penalty from serving precisely the purpose that it was intended specifically to serve, all along.

Bottom line, Florida and Michigan didn't hold "elections" at all, because to have an election, you have to elect someone. Those states' "elections" elected nobody. According to the rules that existed when voters went to the polls on Election Day, nothing was at stake. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

If Michigan and Florida want to have delegates, they need to hold a "re-vote" -- which is to say, they need to hold a legitimate, meaningful vote for the first time -- in accordance with the DNC rules adopted beforehand (which, as I understand it, allows them to do that).

[Brendan Loy]

P.S. Washington state held a Democratic caucus on February 9 and a Democratic primary ten days later. It was agreed in advance that the caucus would allocate 100% of the delegates and the primary would allocate none. That decision fundamentally and inherently altered the nature of those events: the caucus became meaningful, the primary became meaningless. Everyone knew this. Fair or unfair, those were the rules. Obviously, it would be manifestly unjust to suddenly decide, after the fact, that the delegate allocation should be based on the beauty-contest primary instead of the delegate-selecting caucus. It would be a violation of the rules that everyone agreed to, or at least acknowledged and understood, in advance.

Same thing with Florida and Michigan. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game, simple as that. Regardless of who was on the ballot.

[Brendan Loy]

P.P.S. By the way, David, I realize you agree with me, so I'm not arguing with you, I'm just pre-emptively striking against anyone who might disagree with us. :)

[David K.]

I'm amused by the argument that caucuses are undemocratic. They may be inconvenient in that you actually have to get off your butt and go tot hem, but they are certainly not undemocratic, everyone gets the chance to vote for their prefered candidate right? Less people show up by their own choice. I suppose you could argue that its undemocratic in the sense that if you get less than the minimum threshold your votes no longer count, but then again you get the chance to make another choice, where else in our democracy does that happen?? Can you imagine if they did that for presidential elections? If a enough of those Nader voters had chosen Al Gore as their second choice we'd be in a different world right now. Presidential run-off elections...interesting concept. It allows third party voters the chance to both voice their first choice AND not have to sacrifice ideology for the better outcome of two less prefered ones.

[JT]

I should have left Florida out of my post because it just gave people another excuse to wax poetic about process when my point was that it's counterproductive to obsess over the outcome. We should still just sit back and wait for the results. Why can't we let important states like Ohio and PA vote before we coronate Obama? Would it hurt the democratic party so much for these candidates to actually go to PA and campaign for a few weeks?

[Brendan Loy]

I agree that there's no great harm in Hillary staying in the race. There would be great harm in her trying to win the nomination by illegitimate tactics, like changing the rules after-the-fact re: Florida and Michigan. (And here I again re-iterate that, as I understand it, holding "re-votes" would not constitute "changing the rules," but counting the delegates from the January contests would.) But if she wants to stay in the race and keep fighting, as long as she does it fair-and-square, that's OK by me.

That said, the reason for the "coronation" is because the delegate math, combined with common sense (e.g., Obama is not going to lose Mississippi, North Carolina, etc.), really does make it mathematically impossible, practically speaking, for Hillary to win. Them's the facts.

But yeah, let the voters have their say. It's just that we already know the outcome, kind of like how you know the outcome of a basketball game where one team is ahead 76-41 with 10 minutes left. And in this case, unlike that one, forfeiting is considered a valid and honorable option. However, it's Hillary's choice and I don't have a problem with her staying in the race. I just have a problem with her laughably dishonest spin, her excessively negative attacks, her cynical rule-changing, etc.

[Joe Mama]

"Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules? Mark it zero!"

-- Walter Sobchak

[CD]

"Bottom line, Florida and Michigan didn't hold "elections" at all, because to have an election, you have to elect someone. Those states' "elections" elected nobody. According to the rules that existed when voters went to the polls on Election Day, nothing was at stake. Zero. Zilch. Nada."

Tell that to the face of the million+ people that didn't give a crap about process and cast their votes as American and Florida citizens. Argue what you want about the outcome and process, and I don't necessarily disagree, but I think that to continue referring to the *huge* number of cast votes in the state of Florida as 'meaningless' and to the vote as a 'beauty contest' is incredibly disrespectful to the citizens and voters of that state, who had nothing to do with the events leading up to the 'punishment' meted out by the Democratic party. They were exercising their right to vote as citizens and that is never and should never be referred to as 'meaningless'.

Also, nothing in WA was 'changed' this year regarding the awarding of delegates. Caucuses have always awarded the delegates in presidential races (non-presidential has a different history). The only thing that has changed is that a primary was introduced in addition to the caucus and all citizens were mailed ballots to vote in that primary. So, the rules did not *change*, but a whole lot of people were certainly confused, especially since most of the citizenry has never known much about or participated in caucuses to begin with. Both parties did a terrible job of explaining it, and there are still people who have no clue that their vote on 2/19 didn't count if they voted Democratic. Again, these votes didn't count in apportioning delegates... but I would never call them meaningless. To do so is an insult.

[CD]

Just to clarify: I'm not arguing that the FL delegates be seated, just arguing that one doesn't need to constantly refer to the vote as 'meaningless' in order to believe that the delegates should not be seated.

Because if we really want to talk about meaninglessness, we would also be talking about how less than 1% of a state's population participates in a nominating process, not about 1+ million people taking the time to vote, but their votes not counting due to the state being punished. If the NCAA strips USC of a national championship due to rules violations of Reggie Bush, would we tell the team that their play was 'meaningless'? I don't think so.

[Brendan Loy]

I'm not saying that the individual opinions of Florida and Michigan voters, as expressed via the votes they cast in an inherently procedurally meaningless "election," are themselves "meaningless." The individual opinions have meaning, and perhaps the act of translating those opinions into votes has some personal "meaning" to the voters, which is fine. But the primaries themselves had no meaning in terms of the nomination process. None whatsoever. They were procedurally meaningless, which is all I'm saying. It isn't an "insult" to the voters to point out that the election they voted in was an absolutely meaningless, null and void non-entity. I will not back off that position, because it is 100% true.

(It doesn't matter whether individual voters knew the rules or not. The rules were what they were. Ignorance of the law is no defense. The elections were procedurally meaningless under the rules in place on Election Day; ergo, the voters voted in procedurally meaningless elections. Simple as that.)

If the NCAA strips USC of a national championship due to rules violations of Reggie Bush, would we tell the team that their play was 'meaningless'? I don't think so.

Ah, nice try, but that's not the situation here, is it? No, because in the Reggie Bush case, you're talking about retroactively changing the status of those games, whereas here, the primaries were a nullity at the time the votes were cast. So the proper analogy is not a retroactively forfeited game, but a preseason exhibition game that someone later tries to argue should "count," for BCS purposes or whatever. Is that exhibition victory "meaningless" for those purposes? Yes, absolutely. Is the "play" in the game meaningless? Maybe not, just as perhaps the "votes" here are not meaningless. But the game itself is meaningless for the purposes being discussed, and similarly here, the "elections" are meaningless. That's not an insult, it's just a fact.

[4-7]

EXIT POLL UNAUTHORIZED RELEASE SHOWING OBAMA DOWN BY 12% IN TEXAS ! CNN FORCED TO SIT ON STORY UNTIL POLLS CLOSE BUT LOCAL TALK RADIO IS

Just kidding. I made it all up.

Anyway, I am going to miss CNN election coverage in HD.

[CD]

"No, because in the Reggie Bush case, you're talking about retroactively changing the status of those games, whereas here, the primaries were a nullity at the time the votes were cast."

You missed the point of my analogy being that it is not what or how or when someone's actions are recognized by whatever larger body that makes actions meaningful. The point is that you played the game, there was an outcome. Whether the game wasn't to ever have counted officially or whether it is retroactively deemed to not have counted, it remains that you acted meaningfully.

Those voters acted meaningfully and no matter how you or anyone else tries to defend it, to constantly dismiss their voice as 'meaningless' *is* disrespectful. Their votes will not translate into anything real for the candidates due to party process, and the outcome might have been different had this not been the case, had the candidates campaigned there, etc. These are all valid statements.

However, clearly, *most* Democrats in Florida chose to vote anyway (the numbers bear that claim out) and to discount that via dismissiveness is disenfranchising in spirit, which I believe is a result of this constant focus on the horse race, which causes so many of us to lose sight of what this is really all about. It is about civic participation, which should never be reduced to mere points in a game; it is about leadership of the United States and the most powerful military in the world; and, most importantly, it is about all kinds of real issues that affect people every day.

Bottom line: I heartily disagree. Elections are never meaningless. Ever. Whether it is a sham election, whether the votes don't count, or whether the votes do count, the act of voting is not meaningless and I maintain that it is disrespectful to refer to them as such.

[David K.]

They were exercising their right to vote as citizens and that is never and should never be referred to as 'meaningless'.

No actually, they weren't. Nowhere does the Constitution guarentee anyone the RIGHT to vote in a private organizations nomination process. The primaries and the caucuses are for the parties alone. While they may have been expressing their opinions with their votes, they were in fact meaningless. They held as much actual weight as if the people of those two states had voted in an online poll run by CNN or by Brendan or by Fred Flintstome. I could hold an election at my office that would have as much meaning as the Florida and Ohio elections did.

[Brendan Loy]

Methinks you're mistaking an argument over semantics for a principled disagreement. I thought I had already conceded the point that "the act of voting is not meaningless." In any event, I concede it now. The act of voting is not meaningless -- even if one votes in a meaningless election, which is what occurred here.

(My calling this election "meaningless" is no different than your reference to "a sham election," in which you still maintain -- and I'll agree -- that "the act of voting is not meaningless." Well, if, as you say, the act of voting is not meaningless in a "sham" election, isn't it, by your logic vis a vis my rhetoric, "disrespectful" for you to refer to such elections as "shams"? After all, there are meaningful votes being cast! .. All I'm doing here is calling the election meaningless, just as you call some elections "a sham." I already made clear that my position -- like yours -- does not reflect on the meaningfulness of the individual act of expressing one's opinion through a vote.)

[Brendan Loy]

P.S. I didn't "miss the point" of your analogy. I fully addressed your point ("[t]he individual opinions have meaning, and perhaps the act of translating those opinions into votes has some personal 'meaning' to the voters, which is fine. But the primaries themselves had no meaning in terms of the nomination process")... and then I noted the fatal logical flaw in your analogy. :)

[CD]

David, the private organizations have given them the right to vote. I didn't say anything about a constitutional right. And you will note that the national party did not take away the Democratic citizens' right to vote, they merely determined that they would not seat the delegates at the national level as a punishment to the state party.

I believe that both party establishments would disagree heartily with your assessment that their (Floridians in this case) votes have as little meaning as your office straw poll. It was not a move meant in the slightest to discount those votes. The punishment was to not seat the delegates. Those are very different things.

[Brendan Loy]

It was not a move meant in the slightest to discount those votes. The punishment was to not seat the delegates. Those are very different things.

Hmm. So, if a state were somehow to be "stripped" of its electoral votes in the November election (leaving aside the unconstitutionality of such an event), would that be "not a move meant in the slightest to discount" the votes of the citizens of that state?

Because this is, analogically, precisely the same thing as that. The only procedural significance that votes in presidential primaries have is to elect delegates (just as the only procedural significance that votes in presidential elections have is to elect electors).

The argument that this was "not a move meant in the slightest to discount those votes" is incoherent and wrong. Those votes were -- deliberately, consciously -- robbed of all of their power to elect the people who elect the nominee. That's the whole point of the penalty. So OF COURSE it discounted those votes!

[Alasdair]

Actually, in Florida, would it not be correct to surmise that Senator Clinton did well there because she didn't campaign there - and Senator Obama did (relatively) poorly there because he didn't campaign there ?

And, is it just me, or are there also other readers of this fine blog who are not yet sure if Brendan is winning his discussions with himself in the comments on this post ?

(grin)

[Brendan Loy]

Heh.

[Joe Loy]

I think that strictly speaking, it's "qwf". Quantum Wave Function. Tonight the Measurement of the Votes will Collapse Texas's Qwf. :} 'Bout time. ;>

"... as legitimate as arguing that the fifteen Obama delegates selected by my stuffed animals at a roundtable meeting in my living room should be seated, because I say so."

I can recall when exactly That was the established Election Law around Here; what's so special about Florida that they should get an exception already? :)

[Alasdair]

Ahhhh ... I had been wondering, Elder Loy, why you had introduced a term decidedly NSFW ...

"Popping the QWF" seems more in line with the generally genteel nature of this blog ... as opposed to the phrase used, which is more reminiscent of another notch on a bedpost ... (not-so-innocent grin) ...