What if the Winner Took All?

The Nightly Build...

---

It's the Delegates, Stupid

On The Dallas Morning News Opinion blog, Mike Hashimoto asks a hypothetical question. If the Democrats awarded delegates in each state in a winner-take-all fashion instead of proportionally, and if the delegate count for each state matched its Electoral College vote, then how would that affect the current delegate totals? By his calculation, Clinton would have 219 electoral votes and Obama only 193. Hashimoto asks, if you accept that analysis, whose will should the superdelegates consider now?

Obviously, no one should accept that analysis. The fact is this primary campaign has always been about one thing and one thing only: delegates to the national convention. Clinton is now desperately trying to recast it as something else. She can't use pledged delegates (Obama's ahead). She can't use total delegates (Obama's ahead). She can't use popular votes (Obama's ahead). She can't use states won (Obama's ahead). She can't use national polls pitting Clinton or Obama against McCain (Obama's ahead). So she wants to use "big" states, or "blue" states, or primary election states. She's down to arguing about some immeasurable quantity called "momentum" (defined so that only last Tuesday's primaries count, but not Vermont and not the Texas caucuses), and before it's through she might even want to use Hashimoto's Electoral College votes.

The only fair way to score a contest is to use the scorekeeping rules that were set up before the contest began, and that's delegates. And by that count, Obama is ahead and will almost certainly be ahead when the last states allocate their delegates. Clinton can take the nomination only by changing the perception of what the scorekeeping rules ought to be. And Hashimoto is generously helping her find a new formula that works to her favor. Hillary seems to have a lot of conservative friends these days.

Hashimoto's exercise reminds me of the old question:
If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
Answer: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.