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Obama Won TexasWinning doesn't mean exactly what it used to.

By John Dickerson
Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008, at 7:27 PM ET
Barack Obama. Click image to expand.

You may think Hillary Clinton won Texas, but she didn't, at least not by the rules of the game. The eventual Democratic nominee will be the one with more delegates, and Obama won more of Texas' than Hillary did.

To reiterate: Clinton won the state's popular vote and the primary, but that doesn't matter, because after a majority of the caucus votes were counted—the second step in Texas' two-stage process—it looks as if Obama won the delegates.

Declaring Obama the winner makes sense. In this primary season, we've got to stick fast to the rules. As both the Obama and Clinton campaigns spin themselves into the topsoil, that's all we have to keep us from madness. Except that Obama supporters have been making a case that doesn't stick to the rules in arguing how Democrats should pick the party's nominee.

Over the last several weeks, as Obama has taken an insurmountable lead among pledged delegates, I have heard various Obama allies and aides argue that if Clinton wins the nomination by convincing superdelegates to overthrow Obama's lead among pledged delegates, it will represent a subversion of the popular will. Whatever backroom thinking went into forming the superdelegate system, it is not in keeping with the view that the people—and not party insiders—should determine the nominee. Obama supporters argue that a superdelegate-driven Clinton victory would be unfair and would destroy the party. Obama's passionate constituents would bolt, furious that the prize had been snatched from them. To avoid this train wreck, superdelegates should sign up with Obama.

Fair or not, if Clinton wins by superdelegates, that win would be perfectly legal. The Democratic Party, in all its wisdom, designed the system to allow for this possibility. It may subvert the popular will, but the rules are the rules. In claiming victory in Texas, Obama is making this very same case, because the Texas delegate win happened through a subversion of the popular will. In just one of the contest's several wrinkles, Texas delegates were apportioned in the primary and caucus among state Senate districts, based on a system that gave more delegates to the candidate who won districts where turnout had been high in previous elections than to the candidate who won districts where turnout had been lower.

Obama played by the rules and won fair and square, but if, as an Obama supporter, you insist that he won Texas through a system that thwarts the popular will, you lose standing to complain about a system that thwarts the popular will in picking the nominee. One system may thwart the will more than the other, sure. But either the principle is that the rules are the rules or it isn't.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, says he is not suggesting that a Clinton nomination victory by a superdelegate majority would be underhanded—though some of his colleagues and allies certainly are making this case. Plouffe's own pitch is that superdelegates should look at Obama's lead in pledged delegates and decide to back him. This is a good argument, but it's not rule-based. Once you start climbing into the heads of the superdelegates, you've gone somewhere else. "There are few principled arguments in either camp," says Democratic pollster and strategist Mark Mellman, "only arguments of interest." There's nothing in the Democratic rule book that instructs superdelegates on how they're supposed to vote or what they're supposed to base their thinking on. Maybe they should support a nominee by following the pledged delegates, or maybe they should take a look at the popular vote. Or maybe they should roll a 12-sided die or ask their pet myna bird.

The Clinton campaign would prefer that superdelegates use the popular vote as a criterion for their decision, since Clinton's slim chances of winning the popular vote are better than her next-to-impossible chances of winning the pledged delegate vote. Obama aides say that the Clinton team's new emphasis on the popular vote is a desperate stratagem they've been forced into by Obama's pledged delegate numbers. This is true, but if the debate is over what criteria the superdelegates should use, any argument goes. But, wait, Obama supporters will insist, the rules say nothing about superdelegates following the popular vote. Correct. They also say nothing about superdelegates following the pledged delegate lead.

Which brings us back to this: If Obama supporters are going to insist that their guy won Texas because the rules are the rules, then they should not squawk if Clinton wins the nomination despite her pledged delegate deficit. The rules are the rules.

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Barack Obama by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Millions of independent voters like myself who are sick to death of the political machines running our country see that Obama has won the primaries. He has more delegates than his opponent. That is the definition of winning.

Now if we see that his victory is overturned by so called 'superdelegates' who owe their position to corrupt patronage of the Clintons, we are going to be rightfully pissed off.

That is called a reality-based argument. You had a contest in all 50 states and several territories. Obama won. Anything less than him being the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party will cause us to not only not vote for Clinton in the fall, but maybe vote for a third party or McCain, and many if not most of us will not vote for a single democrat on any ticket; local, national or state.

I'm not sure I would even ever vote for another Democrat as long as I live. If your party gives us the finger, we'll give it right back to you.

--morganja

(To reply, click here.)

I guess what I'm missing here from Mr. Dickerson is what Obama is supposed to do about Texas if he wants to retain his ability to complain at the end? Give Clinton delegates?

I know John asked this question of Plouffe today and may not have liked the response but there is a big distinction between Texas and the DNC process writ large.

Texas rules are what they are. Both sides played on an equal footing. The convention rules also are what they are but Dickerson seems to be arguing that after the process is done, the superdelegates should be absolutely free from criticism if they decide to basically wipe out months worth of process to accumulate states, delegates and popular votes. Unlike Clinton in Texas, Obama isn't threatening to sue if the superdelegates go the other way. I do think he should be more than able to criticize such a result, shouldn't he?

--jcormac9

(To reply, click here.)

The article's premise is that caucus votes and superdelegates are morally equivalent. I.e., Obama can't decry supers and extol caucuses. This is flatly illogical. While caucuses may not be a traditional type of vote, they are nonetheless a vote by the people. All of the candidates are on equal footing, and the choice is made by the people. The superdelegates, on the other hand, vote with the same weight as thousands of persons. One single unfettered superdelegate, though only one person, has thousands of times the influence the ordinary voter will have.

A caucus is a fair and open vote by the electorate, no better or worse than a primary, just different. Neither is an accurate predictor of how a state will go in the general election, but both are democratic indications of who the state's voters prefer. Superdelegates are not democratic.

If anyone thinks the Democratic party won't absolutely implode if supers override a candidate with the most pledged delegates, they're living in a dream world. The candidates are too close in position and electability and winnability for either side to argue they should win by supers.

If you're for Hillary, her already high negatives will reach an unelectably high level if she is perceived to have lost the primary and won the nomination.

--JTS

(To reply, click here.)

While what the author contends may well be true, that doesn't mean there isn't firm and direct guidance on how the Super Delegates are to vote. There is.

During the creation of the system, the Super Delegates were created for this very situation: a convention where none of the potential nominees had sufficient votes to gain the nomination. The Super Delegates are there to select the nominee in the best interests of the party. That was generally regarded at the time and I think remain so today to mean the candidate with the best chance of winning the election. That is the case that Senators Clinton and Obama need to make, not just to the Super Delegates, but to the party at large: I will WIN!

I don't care how reasoned the argument for one of the other is, if it leads to a less electable nominee. Frankly, though I voted for Obama in the California primary, I would happily vote for Clinton. Winning is the SOLE criteria for decision by the Super Delegates.

--MacAdvisor

(To reply, click here.)

(3/12)

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