a strong candidate does better than they.  Then they are against caucuses.  Caucuses favor insiders.  They have the familiarity.  How many times have you heard someone who's been in the system a long time say, "I've known XXXXX a long time."  When you ask how they know each other, they then say, "I don't really.  I feel as though I know him or her."  Caucus systems reward the familiar.  Indeed, so do primaries.\

Enter Barack Obama, shattering the tendency of caucuses to go to insiders.  He did this with superb organization and overwhelming support (including even some insiders).  Hillary would never have opposed caucuses after the fact
if she had won them.

I believe caucuses are bad for the party.  They reward the familiar, usually the supposed "safe," and not necessarily the best candidate.  It's a long shot that needed fresh air gets infused into the party.  The familiar trumps the quality of the experience and leadership ability.  

The caucus system brought us one stale candidate after another: Humphrey, Mondale, and even McGovern (although I'd argue that the case of McGovern was different because no better heir to the Kennedy mantle was available).

Caucuses are also especially vulnerable to mischief. For example, as I noted before, when Scoop Jackson tried to run as a favorite son in Washington (he wasn't really running for pres, but wanted to be a king maker), he used the credentials committee at the District Convention to refuse to seat duly elected delegates.  And he got his "favorite son" status by strong-arming the convention.  For party-building, the bad feelings resulting from such maneuvers can take decades to overcome.

 

My guy got his clock cleaned in '00. What I didn't like was the countless numbers of union members who wanted to support our candidate but feared retribution. He was the "outsider" without the establishment support.
However, I think the combination of a caucus and a primary system is a good thing.
I like the fact that it's door-to-door, old-school organizing that wins caucuses- not media buys and not direct mail.
It's not an easy task to encourage an Iowan to come out on the coldest night of the year and spend a few hours at the caucus. I feel that candidates have to work harder in caucus states than primary states.
I agree, if HRC had won all four caucuses, she'd be singing the praises of this.

First, this article adds absolutely nothing new to the conversation in terms of either facts or commentary. Why does it even exist?

Second, does any halfway intelligent observer really think that Hillary is trying to actually convince superdelegates with this popular vote argument? The purpose of this argument is to give the superdelegates a peg on which to hang their hats should they decide, for whatever reasons of their own, to throw their support to Hillary.

Since Clinton cannot catch Obama in pledged delegates, since she cannot win more states (even though I think that is a silly criteria), she realizes that to overcome the "superdelegates cannot go against the will of people" argument, she needs to latch onto a statistical data point where she can argue that a vote for her is not a vote against the will of the party.

Sure, she structures the argument is a way favorable to her. I doubt it will work. But she doesn't have to convince any superdelegate that she is right, and unless she is a blithering idiot like Simon, she is not trying to do so; she just has to convince superdelegates that she can make a convincing case and cover their arses should they want to choose her.

The only aspect of her argument that doesn't pass the laugh test is Michigan, because hers was the only name on the ballot. I think she is justified in counting Florida. I understand that the DNC said they would not seat the delegation, but it is not as if people there did not have a choice and did not leave their living rooms and cast a ballot.

Like I say, I doubt this will work, and that Obama will be the nominee by mid-June, if not sooner. But this strategy is simply not as absurd as Roger Simon makes it out to be, and Hillary is not that dumb.  

She HAS been trying to convince superdelegates with "her popular vote" argument- both HRC and surrogates have been humming this tune since PA. This has been widely documented in the media, mentioned on her campaign's conference calls to supporters, and is her campaigns "message".

Yes she does "structure the argument in a way favorable to her" and does in a utopian fashion.

Tell me this, WHY even have DNC rules if they are to be ignored? Both of these states played a high stakes game of chicken and lost. The assumption was the DNC would cave and they did not.

I believe that Simons made some salient points. She IS trying to rewrite the rules and reframe the argument. She is also wrong.

First, there are no rules of which I am aware that require a superdelegate to vote for any particular candidate. They are supposed to use their judgment.

Given that, Hillary can make any argument she pleases to them. Whether a superdelegate wants to consider the popular vote in Florida or Michigan in reaching their own judgment, no rule comes into play. Unless you can show me the DNC rule that states what an individual delegate can consider in reaching their decision and what they cannot.

Superdelegates will make decisions for all different reasons. Some will make their choice based on what they perceive to be in their own electoral interests. Some will try to reflect the will of the voters where they are from. Others will payback favors done 15 years ago or otherwise act of personal loyalty. Others will decide based on their own evaluation of the electability of each candidate.

The problem for Clinton is that Obama has constructed a strong argument that superdelegates voting for someone who is behind in pledged delegates is an invalid vote; that the superdelegates should simply vote for the leader in pledged delegates. Now, that's not a rule either. It's an argument, and not a very persuasive one in nay objective sense, since its natural result would be to render the superdelegates discretion meaningless.

This is what Clinton needs to overcome. She is simply trying, IMHO, to provide superdelegates who want to vote for her (for whatever reason) with a plausible argument that in doing so a vote for Clinton is vote consistent with the will of the voters.

I think the effort will fail in the end, because I think there is little doubt that were Clinton to take the nomination that way, the Democratic Party would be irrevocably cleaved. With Obama, at worst Reagan Democrats abandon the party and we lose an election. (I actually think Obama will win, but this is the worst case scenario from his nomination). Democrats will still have the Senate and House.

After NC and Indiana, assuming Obama wins the former and keeps it close in the latter, more and more superdelegates will start coming out for Obama. Eventually, Gore and Edwards will join that stampede, and all that will remain is what does Clinton get that allows her to exit the race gracefully.

But my overall point is Simon is suggesting that Hillary is doing something that seems pretty dumb and easy to see through, and that is not the case at all. She has properly mapped out the sole road to victory open to her right now.

Hillary is very smart. When Roger Simon enters rooms, more likely than not the average IQ in that room tends to drop.

Simply for the reason that she has not kept her word. The Clinton campaign agreed to rules and regulations that the DNC set up. When they became desperate they alone have sought to re-write those rules .... to the extent that they even manufactured a "grassroots" uprising at the DNC headquarters the other day. PATHETIC.

Caucuses as flawed or virtuous as they may be (depending on one's point of view) reflect representational government.  Hence if you are a caucus winner (or runner up for that matter) .... those delegates you've won represent their electorate which translates into some number or percentage of the population (in this case democrats). In other words .... a caucus delegate might represent 5 or 20 or 300 (some number of) democrat constituents (there was a good Politico write up on this).

So when you factor in those delegates (and pick a number of how many folks they represent) Obama's popular vote lead ends up exceeding Hillary's by a few million. The Main Stream Media does not report that. And the Clinton campaign ignores that underlying premise of the caucus system (which reflects on a party level, representational government).

The great leveler in this drawn out campaign remains the SUPER DELEGATES (another form of representational government vs. a true democracy / one person - one vote).

Hillary / Billary ... or should I say Team Clinton are Political Pros - no doubt. They understand better then anyone the ins and outs of the electoral system. The problem is things didn't go their way. The ONLY REASON Hillary is still in this primary can be attributed to a massive Rovian style kitchen sink campaign to drive up PERCEIVED Obama negatives.  The media loves this.... it's a windfall for ratings .... but as far as electing our next President, Team Clinton is doing everything possible it can to get Hillary elected ... if not now then 4 years from now.

Because if Barrack Obama wins this election Hillary's upward mobility plan comes to a screeching halt. She's non-competitive 8 years from now primarily because of age.  NO it's now or never??  Oh wait a minute ... if McCain gets in then I've got a chance 4 years from now .... yeah that's the ticket.

Just another reason Hillary is DISHONORABLE.

And I'm not wanting to get into a pointless argument about Hilalry's vileness at this point in the campaign.

But I will address two arguments you make. In trying to measure actual support in the party, you can't count a caucus vote as representing anything other than what is reported. Winning X% of the caucus vote does not mean that X% of the electorate supports you.

I actually do not have a problem with caucuses in theory, and the fact of the matter is that Hillary is hardly in a position to argue that delegates won by them are any less valid than delegates won via a primary. But caucuses are not necessarily reflective of the will of the electorate.

Second, the argument that Hillary wants to count the votes of Florida and Michigan residents in her calculations does not violate any DNC rules. As I understand it, those rules only go so far as to seating the delegates those elections represent, but they cannot, as a factual matter, nullify the actual fact of those elections.

As I said, Michigan, where Hillary's name was the only one on the ballot, is a bit silly. But Florida was an even playing field, and the 2 million or whatever number of votes cast there by Democrats are a fact.
 

My take on the whole argument about the popular vote is a bit different than what has been discussed.  I do believe the DNC is bound by the rules they started with as far as recognizing the primary results from Michigan and Florida.  I wish there were some way to do a re-vote in those states that complied with the rules but that time has passed, and I agree with the argument that you can't change the rules in the middle of the game.  If the situation was reversed, Hillary would be fighting just as hard using that argument.

But, the larger issue, as far a electability goes, is that no matter how much those two states flouted the DNC and shouldn't be counted in the nominating process, they both still get to vote and be counted in the general election.

And that's the real reason that super delegates might care about who won the popular vote in those states.  In November, they both still will be swing states; so, who they prefer is a legitimate consideration as far as determining elecatbility goes.  

The caucus system gives the advantage to party "loyalist" to vet and select their candidate. It's very partisan by design. The middle road is a Pennsylvania style primary where only registered partisans vote ... and there's the open primary where the influence of "independents" can make a real difference. And because they're very different ... there's that wacky Texas thing (maybe it's not wacky ... just a hybrid).

But throughout the designated delegates represent some population from their state and party. They are representatives plan and simple. What's difficult to gauge is the actual populous the caucus delegates represent ... but conservatively one can project those numbers with greater accuracy than a poll. The analysis that was done at Politico (where I've parroted this argument) showed Obama with a logical and insurmountable lead. Even if you gave the Clintons the popular vote in MI & FL.

Unfortunate that team Clinton agreed to the terms and conditions levied by the DNC .... but EVERY candidate agreed to those Ts & Cs. It very likely and perhaps legally imperative that delegates from MI & FL be seated ... but how many? The Repubs punishment was halving the number of seated delegates. The democrats have to come up with something but the PARTY .... the PARTY needs to select a candidate in opposition .... and as things have played out it clearly falls to the Super-Delegates.

I can live with that fact and the super-delegates decision at this point ... because I'm quite sure my candidate, Senator Obama could too.

But what will Hillary do when it becomes clear that her peers (Senators and Congress(wo)men vote her out of the race?

Oh by the way ... I love you AZNEW ... you're a rock of consistency.

In Iowa party registration does NOT come into play. Any registered voter can caucus and no one is asked for voter registration.
So- it's not partisan. Although the caucuses are run by the parties, party ID never comes up.

... as it shows there are probably over 50 different ways to elect a candidate (don't want to leave out Guam & Puerto Rico, etc.)