The Column

Delegate Math

The strange, disturbing calculus of the Democratic race

I'm not sure who is embarrassing the Democratic party more right now, Eliot "$4300" Spitzer or Hillary "Shame-on-you-Barack-Obama-but-will-you-be-my-vice-president?" Clinton.

Let's get something abundantly straight here: For all intents and purposes Barack Obama has the Democratic nomination in his possession. The narrative that Hillary Clinton somehow amassed a stunning comeback in Ohio and Texas is not even hogwash, it's the sudsy water leftover after you get done scrubbing down a swine. Clinton led in those two states by twenty points each two weeks before they voted and lost both leads, not to mention the problematic fact that she actually lost Texas because of the caucus while Obama increased his delegate lead once the campaign moved to Wyoming and Mississippi.

The Clinton campaign is now running on three flawed notions, the first being a state of Bushian denial so grand that she is actually proposing that Barack Obama be her vice-president even though she's losing. The second premise she and her campaign are putting out is that the only States That Matter are the ones she won and that the ones she didn't win don't really count. If you listen to Hillary's surrogates, you'd think that anyone who lives outside of New York, California, New Jersey, and Ohio isn't really an American voter and thus a part of a freakish cult, who believes Obama is either Jesus Christ come to Earth or at least Neo from The Matrix.

Third—and most distressing—she has boiled her essential argument down to the notion that on his first day in the White House, Barack Obama will get a phone call about a border dispute in Slovenia and promptly shit himself in terror.

Again, Obama is going to be the nominee, so all of this back-biting and eye-poking is severely annoying.

Oh, but you say you're a Clinton supporter and you want her to tough it out? You think she's got the moxie to do it? I invite you to check out Slate.com's delegate counter. Basically, even if she ran the table and won by 15 points in every remaining state, she still wouldn't catch Obama because while she was looking to knock him out on Super Tuesday with wins in The States That Matter, Obama was actually—and here's a wild fucking notion for a Democrat—campaigning in every state.

So Clinton will go into the convention trailing in the number of delegates, the number of states, and—almost guaranteed—the popular vote, at which point she plans to bank on superdelegates.

If you've followed my thought experiment thus far, come with me another step or two. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party—the party of the people, the party of voter's rights, the party of the Civil Rights movement, the party of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner—is going to overturn the will of the people and deny the first black candidate the nomination based on an undemocratic technical method?

Sorry, kids, but not even the Democrats are that stupid. Hell, I don't think even the Republicans would have the testicular fortitude to pull that one.

But wait, you say! What about Michigan and Florida! What about the revote!

First of all, Michigan and Florida are the 6 year-old spoiled brats of the primary season. As we know from 2000, Florida is pretty much the gold-goddamn-standard of dysfunctional politics, but haven't we Ohioans been warning the rest of you about Michigan for years now? Aside from its scurrilous college football team, imploding economy, and general douche-bagedness, it now thinks it deserves the chance to screw the rest of the country the way it's screwed itself for so many years.

Both states flagrantly broke the rules of the primary system, jumped the gun, and knew the repercussions. This is not to say they don't have a point about the absurd nature of the primary system, but that doesn't change the rules everyone was well aware of. Clinton now talks about Michigan and Florida like their elections weren't modeled after a Banana Republic.

See the difficulty here? The Clinton camp wants to simultaneously say that the first votes in both states should count because she won and if not, that the two states should revote... unless she loses in which case the will of the voters shouldn't matter because the superdelegates should choose the best nominee. If it were up to the Clinton campaign the Democratic Primary Rules would be a binder with one page that says, "Hillary Gets to Be President."

But fine. One man, one vote, so let's say both Michigan and Florida revote. Say Clinton wins by fifteen points in both. It still won't get her over the delegate hump.

All of this points to the distressing confirmation of one of the worst stereotypes of Hillary Clinton, which is that she is all blind ambition and will do or say anything to win the presidency. This is an inaccurate argument but grounded in the reality that Clinton has run a typically cynical campaign—poll-tested and blow-dried like it was made of John Edwards's hair.

As Obama is fond of saying, he has run the same campaign when he was down twenty points that he's running now. His "attacks"—such as the stern talking-to he gave Clinton about releasing her tax returns—are almost comical in how unhysterical they are.

Meanwhile, a different version of Hillary Clinton shows up depending on the day of the week. One moment she's honored by Obama's presence, the next she rebukes him publicly, the next she all but says John McCain would be a better president than him, the next she's offering him the vice-presidency. Could you picture Barack Obama waving around a flier and ranting, "Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!"?

Finally, the increasingly un-subtle racial subtext to all this has become more disturbing than the dinner table at the Spitzer house. And here I'm not even referring to the shockingly retarded comments of former VP nominee Geraldine Ferraro.

Take the felating of the poor white voter, for instance. I have always felt bad for the poor white voter because he or she throughout American history has received the most promises of any group while simultaneously receiving the least attention. Like Dylan said, the poor white voter is the ultimate pawn.

In Ohio, for instance, 20% of voters said race was a factor in their decision. Hillary Clinton won this group by a three-to-one margin. Now I'm sure the campaign feels fantastic about winning the "anyone-but-the-n****r" vote, but what this says about Ohio and the country writ large is that politicians—even Democrats—are still okay with silently accepting the type of race-baiting divisions that have defined us so well for the last century.

In an early debate, John Edwards had the courage to say, and I paraphrase "If you're voting for me because Hillary's a woman and Barack's black, then don't, because I don't want your vote"—thus swearing off the scared-white-guy constituency.

Clinton, on the other hand, has used this dynamic to make an imperceptible appeal to rural white voters uncomfortable with a black candidate. This is certainly not to say that she has at all engaged in outright race-baiting (although her husband did a pretty good job of it in South Carolina), but at the same time she hasn't dissuaded the issue.

Ohio is a state that saw a large influx of southern whites during the last century, who had to compete for industrial jobs with blacks, stirring a brew of racial resentment that has poisoned the water from Lake Eerie to the Ohio River for quite some time. Parts of Ohio could easily pass for the Deep South, and it was with this electoral strategy that Clinton managed to beat Obama. Pennsylvania will likely make for a similar result because, as the saying goes, between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, you've basically got Alabama.

Still, like I said, it's all good. Obama will get the nomination because—contrary to what Geraldine Ferraro thinks—he's a better candidate who has run a better campaign.