Hillary the Tactician

Has anyone else noticed the dramatic shift in press coverage of Hillary and Obama? By some counts Hillary gained 3 delegates on March 4, barely denting Obama's lead of nearly 100 delegates. Yet the press practically threw a ticker tape parade for her Hillaresurgence. There was virtually no fallout when in a fit of paranoia, Clinton likened Obama's intention to increase his emphasis on their differences to Ken Starr. Meanwhile, the press has been skewering Obama left and right.

This is of course a direct result of Hillary's complaints about the media treating her unfairly, as evidenced by the now infamous SNL skit, and the media's neurotic self conscious nature. Realizing this was happening, the Clinton campaign took advantage and threw everything but the kitchen sink at Obama in the runup to the March 4 primaries.

If nothing else, the Clintons are tactically brilliant. Welling up before the New Hampshire primary and Super Tuesday are two more examples. (Once could have been considered a fortunate coincidence)

The problem with tactical leaders is they garner intense opposition. Karl Rove comes to mind. Bill Clinton too is not remembered for his ideas, but for his political skills. How many of you remember what the Clinton Doctrine says? The Republican revolution of 1994 was largely a reaction to his tactical victories.

Contrast this with Reagan. Not tactically brilliant, but he is remembered for his ideas of small government and defeating communism by outspending it.

(For the record, the Clinton Doctrine was about military intervention against genocide)

Superdelegates

From Wikipedia: Superdelegates are delegates to a presidential nominating convention in the United States who are not bound by the decisions of party primaries or caucuses. Superdelegates are elected officeholders and party officials.

In other words in a close contest, after the party rank and file have voted in the primaries, the party establishment gets to decide who really gets nominated. Thus the image of the smoke filled back room. Presumably the superdelegates demand political favors from the winning candidate.

Normally this would not be all that bad, but there is a potential issue this time. One of the Democratic candidates has much better connections with the Washington establishment, and the other is an African American. If Obama gets a majority of the popular delegates, and a back room deal is made to nominate Hillary, it will be very hard to avoid the notion of a racially motivated conspiracy. I don't know how strong the backlash would be, but I would bet many of those superdelegates would lose enough support that they would be vulnerable in their next election. It would certainly be very damaging to the Democratic party.

Between now and the convention, look for both sides to claim to be ahead in the delegate count. Obama will not count the superdelegates. The Clintons will count the ones who have specified a preference. But take it with a grain of salt. A preference is not a commitment.

Electoral College Short Circuit

A number of states are passing legislation that all their presidential electoral votes should go to whoever wins the national popular vote. It only takes a few states doing this to effectively kill the electoral college for everyone: if even one state switches results based on this rule, it would usually be enough to guarantee the popular candidate gets more electoral votes.

This idea is really dumb for several reasons. The first reason is well known. If the popular vote is close enough that hanging chads in Florida can affect the result, then a full national recount will be necessary. An awful lot of lawyers will send their kids to college on the windfall from that one. And you can guarantee the winner will be from the party which has a majority on the Supreme Court. (It's not funny that in Bush v. Gore, the republican justices all voted against states rights and the democrats all voted for it, exactly the opposite of what would be expected.)

The second reason it is dumb is that candidates have no strong reason to campaign in a manner beneficial to those states.

Finally, the only way a state's new law make a difference in the election result would be if the national popular vote overrules the state's own popular vote. Each state's short circuit law can never help the state get its preference elected, it can only hurt.