Tomorrow, if all goes as planned the Democrats will confirm Barrack Obama for their nominee. Yet, the loser in this race received significantly more popular votes than the eventual winner. The result came from rules that the party designed to balance out electoral needs. The party has vacillated between involving too many party activists and too few.
The nominating process should serve two purposes, it should energize your base of voters, and the caucus system seems to have done that partially. At the same time it needs to introduce, presumably favorably, the candidate to the wider electorate. In those states where there were primaries, that seems to have been done, but in major other parts of the country, that did not happen. In this cycle, IMHO, the democrats have relied a bit too much on caucuses. Senator Clinton can make the accurate claim that she won more voters even if Senator Obama won more delegates.
I am not sure who will win the general election, based on polling across the country voters are in a nasty mood. So whether the nomination system works or not may not make any difference in this election cycle. But that does not mean that the process creates more problems than it solves.
As I see the reliance on caucuses it has numerous problems. First, it over-emphasizes the role of party activists. Second, the caucuses reduce the possibility that some potential voters - even democratic voters - will participate. The elderly and low income people may have a lower propensity to participate in these events than upper middle income members of the party. That is where a good part of the liberal wing of the party resides and that is who is supporting Senator Obama.
To his credit, Obama recognized the constraints of the current cycle more clearly than Clinton did. In the general election, if his inexperience begins to show, and there are signs that it could well, the democrats will only have their own rules to blame for his loss.
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As I understand it, Clinton only wins the popular vote if you count Florida where Obama didn't campaign, and Michigan where Obama wasn't even on the ballot. Even if you count the Michigan voters who voted "uncommitted" as having voted for Obama (on the assumption that if they didn't vote for Clinton who's name was the only one on the ballot, they probably supported Obama), Obama gets more popular votes. Counting Florida and Michigan also ignores the fact that many primary voters didn't bother to go to the polls because they were told their votes would not be counted, so they may not be accurate reflections of the electorate's opinions in those states.
Add to that the fact that when Clinton claims to have won the popular vote, she's not counting several of the caucus states at all.
The point I'm trying to make: While I agree with you that the caucus system is problematic, and that primaries based on delegates should probably be done away with, the notion that Clinton actually one more votes requires a LOT of assumptions about the data that should be... skepticism inducing.
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