For the past couple of weeks I've been blogging about how, regardless of how many states Senators Clinton and Obama each "win" tonight, the Democratic primary system is not like the electoral college -- winner does not take all -- and therefore neither one of them is likely to emerge from today as a prohibitive favorite in terms of actually securing a majority of delegates. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers has now run some numbers, and he calculates that the largest possible delegate spread between the two candidates after this evening is likely to be no more than 75 delegates, and that as of tomorrow morning both candidates will need to win over 1000 more delegates for a majority -- probably more than 1100 -- with only 1428 pledged delegates remaining to be chosen in primaries and caucuses. Thus, in order to win the nomination without the aid of "superdelegates," either candidate would need to win more than three-quarters of the remaining pledged delegates, something that is virtually inconceivable.

Today's Washington Post has an article that discusses "The Downside of Obama Strategy," i.e., that he actually has the audacity to believe that every Democrat's (and, perhaps, every American's) vote should count equally. The article notes (accurately) that Clinton has done better in large, electoral-vote-rich states than has Obama, which has ostensibly provoked fears about the prospects of his winning in November. It doesn't matter that he has received more popular votes than Clinton in contested elections--which allows us to omit Michigan and Florida--and, of course, that he has won more delegates. All that matters, according to a number of quoted Clinton supporters, is the vote in large states. So what we have is an attempt to apply to the nominating process the Electoral College's effective disenfranchisement of those unlucky enough to live in states where they are the political minority and the insane emphasis on a relatively few "battleground" states . One gather that Clinton will lose to Obama in today's caucuses in Wyoming. But, hey, it doesn't matter what Wyoming Democrats think, because they live in a Republican state.

Unless Barack Obama wins both Texas and Ohio (and adds Pennsylvania a couple of weeks later for good measure), the race will go on, and the controversy about counting delegates from Florida and Michigan will become ever more heated. The Clinton position that the results of the primaries held there in January, in patent defiance of the Democratic National Committee, should be honored, is preposterous. The candidates had pledged to honor the ban by not campaigning there. Obama wasn't even on the ballot in one of those states and certainly didn't campaign. But if Clinton and Obama remain more-or-less tied after the next string of primaries, there will, I suspect, be great pressure to rehold the primaries in a context where both candidates can campaign. This appears fair on the surface, but there is a real paradox in adopting this solution.

I'm like, scratching my head. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for president, correct? The nomination will be awarded officially by delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the delegate selection process is over, and the majority of the delegate votes at the convention belong to people who will vote for Obama. Ergo, QED, therefore, ipso facto, a fortiori and you can take it to the bank, Senator Obama will be the nominee.

So Hillary Clinton takes the occasion to announce:

She is the candidate who will be the best president;
She is asking people to continue to donate to her campaign;
She will decide on the future of her campaign in the coming days, based on what the people who voted for her want her to do;
That the voters of South Dakota have had the last word in the primaries, even though the polls in Montana were still open at that very moment;
That more people voted for her than had ever voted for a candidate in a primary -- even though more people voted for Obama than for Hillary Clinton.

The headlines -- most of them, anyway -- are saying that Senator Clinton beat Senator Obama 51% to 45% in the Nevada caucus contest today. Except that some reports say Senator Obama "won," 13 delegates to 12. What's up? There's a debate going on over at Matt Yglesias's blog (and elsewhere, too, I venture to guess -- especially among the spinners).

Well, there are at least three different metrics by which today's contests could be evaluated.

Almost assuredly not. In fact, neither Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama is likely to be even halfway to the required total of 2023 delegates by then, and the delegate difference between them on February 6th is likely to be quite small.

The Democratic Party has just stripped Michigan of its votes at the national convention because, in violation of Party rules, Michigan is holding a primary before February 1. The Party has also done the same to Florida. Under party rules, only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina are allowed to hold primaries before February 1.

Losing both New Hampshire and Iowa can destroy a candidacy. Winning both is a sure path to the nomination.

Needless to say, many pundits are now commenting on the rules of the Democratic Party re the selection of its presidential candidate. See, e.g., E.J. Dionne's column in today's Washington Post, where he writes that "Democrats have contrived a nominating contest that even Rube Goldberg would have considered too convoluted, too dysfunctional and too improbable to name as his own." Save for the certainly peculiar way by which Texas names its delegates--I had the pleasure of voting twice for Barack Obama, once in early voting (in a secret ballot) and then several days later at my local caucus (which is definitely not secret)--I don't share the hostility to a preference-sensitive proportional representation system that does not negate the votes of everyone who doesn't vote for "the winner" (who may, as with McCain in a number of states, get distinctly less than a majority of the vote). But I've already made such arguments, and I won't rehearse them again. My current grumpiness is about something else, though regular readings of Balkinization shouldn't be surprised by what I'm about to write.

Hillary Clinton is evidently running for the Republican nomination for president. Monday, she met with Richard Mellon Scaife -- yes, the very architect and financier of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, the man behind the Whitewater hoax, the man who spent millions of dollars promoting the story that Hillary Rodham Clinton had Vince Foster murdered -- now the publisher of a commercially non-viable far right-wing vanity newspaper, and used the occasion to denounce Barack Obama for being a member of Jermiah Wright's church.

Today, I read this in the Washington Post: "[Like John McCain] Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he has taken in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care . . . ."

It's not very surprising that a recent poll finds that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for John McCain if Obama is the nominee, since it has been the Clinton strategy for several weeks now to endorse John McCain over Obama.

Last July, I published a piece in the Boston Globe, entitled "No Vice," arguing that we would be better off either without a Vice President at all--we got along without one for 45 of our first 180 years)--or, perhaps more plausibly, waiting until after the election and having the winner, a la the 25th Amendment, nominate a vice president, subject to congressional confirmation. I would, incidentally, also allow the President or Congress to fire the Vice President, but that's another matter for another thread.

I can't help but wonder if John McCain might not find some real merit in the suggestion. Consider his dilemma. It is clear that Mike Huckabee isn't going to be the nominee for president, but his followers might (legitimately?) feel dissed if he isn't chosen for Veep. At best, they might stay home; at worst, they might vote for Obama and actually put some of the Red States in play, especially if Obama chooses, say, James Webb or Wesley Clark as his Veep. On the other hand,

If there is one thing that is clear about contemporary America, it is that "democracy" scarcely describes our approach to politics. No, I'm not going to do another attack on our Constitution. Instead, I continue to be interested in the widespread belief that the Democratic primary has gone on "too long" and that something needs to be done to wrap it all up (and, in fact, that it should have been wrapped up weeks ago). As a committed Obamaite, I've not been above such thoughts, but as a slightly more detached analyst, I wonder what exactly is wrong about the current imbroglio, at least if one believes in democracy.

Consider the following: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama actually have had to visit states like Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, which they will certainly not do for the general election. They will also find themselves in North Carolina and South Dakota before too very long. This means, among other things, that they are actually forced to become familiar with issues that might matter to people in those states and address them as, gasp, the equal of Democrats in safe states or the fabled swing voters in the few "battleground states." I'm opposed, of course,

As many of you who regularly read my blog know, I'm not big into politics here. (It's a fascinating, but dirty business.) I've written the rare column about it, but I watched the returns on Thursday's Iowa caucuses with some interest, and I thought I'd write something about it, as the 2008 presidential campaigns got officially underway.

As you all know, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee were the winners on the Democratic and Republican sides, respectively. Obviously both candidates got a huge boost from winning the first major political contest of the 2008 presidential campaign. But I thought some pundits went a little overboard with the pronounciations they were making, especially about Obama.

According to the Obama campaign, he won 845 of the 1671 pledged delegates last night, to Senator Clinton's 836. This appears to be roughly consistent, give or take a few delegates, with others' estimates, as well -- see here and here. When added to his previous 63-48 lead, that would give Obama a 908 to 884 lead in pledged delegates. (There are seven more delegates to be chosen from Democrats abroad who voted yesterday.)

Only 1428 pledged delegates are still to be chosen in the remaining primaries and caucuses. Thus, in order to enter the convention with a majority (2025 delegates), Senator Obama would need to win 1117 of those remaining delegates, or over 78 percent. Senator Clinton would need to win 1141 delegates, or 80 percent. Obviously, neither of the candidates is going to secure anywhere close to a majority before the August convention. It is more likely that each will end up with between 1500 and 1700 pledged delegates, i.e., at least 300 delegates short of what they need to win.

There was a story in the NYT today which repeated an argument Hillary Clinton has been making for awhile -- that only she and John McCain cross the "commander in chief threshold." This argument is meant to stress her experience and readiness for the presidency, but there is a shadow issue that few have noticed although it dogged the first Clinton presidency. That's the relationship between the officer corps and the Democratic party. So far I've noticed one story on this issue in the Washington Times which gave expression to the serious doubts the military has about both Democratic candidates. The conservative and Republican tendencies of the officer corps have been noted but I'm not advancing a Seven Days in May scenario and those tendencies are inherently no more worrisome that the liberal and Democratic tendencies of law professors. The issue is rather whether the gulf between most of the officer corps and Democrats has reached the point where alienation, lack of common ground, and mistrust would lead to unnecessary conflict, misunderstandings, and serious policy mistakes in a Clinton or Obama administration. Remember the opening months of the first Clinton administration -- gays in the military? That conflict featured the military brass drawing on their contacts in Congress to oppose an initiative featured in the presidential election.

Without endorsing either of the three Presidential candidates in the US, and without suggesting any underhanded shenanigans, let me propose a thought about USA '08.

It occurred to me last week while having drinks with a dozen or so industry peers - almost all democrats, mind you. The subject of the conversation somehow shifted to politics and the candidates... and I fully expected the group to be happy about Sen. Obama's advantage over Sen. Clinton. That, however, wasn't the case: No one at the table endorsed Obama.

George W. Bush is now in the midst of trying to ensure his legacy. His speech this Friday at the Conservative Political Action Committee made clear that he sees the future direction of the Republican party as continuing what he regards as his signature policies: demanding lower taxes appointing conservative judges, increasing spending on defense, and fighting the war on terror, which, for Bush, means continuing the war in Iraq and the military occupation of Iraq indefinitely. Put another way, Bush's speech put down a marker that if John McCain or any other Republican wants to be elected in 2008, Bush expects it will be by a continuation of his basic policies-- a third term of the George W. Bush Administration. It is worth noting that on almost all of the issues just mentioned, John McCain appears to be following Bush.

The Republicans, now divided, are trying to put the Reagan coalition together again. Bush's advice is: do it my way. Use my Presidency and its commitments-- low taxes, a conservative judiciary, and national security in an age of terrorism as the party's mantra going forward. To know what the Republicans stand for, look at what I stand for.

One of the respondents to my previous post points out, altogether correctly, that George W. Bush isn't truly "unaccountable." It's possible, after all, that Congress could impeach him or that it would simply vote to cut off all funds for even one more day in Iraq. Putting to one side the fact that the latter action would be irresponsible in the extreme, any genuine analysis of the notion of the American "constitutional dictatorship" must include attention to the vital role that political parties play in our political system.

Imagine, for example,

that Ross Perot had been elected and then embarked on Bush's policy in Iraq. One wonders if he would have been successful, precisely because there would have been no institutionalized party backing the Texas maverick. Even if he could have initiated some activities using his constitutional commander-in-chief powers, one could well expect that members of both parties would have been eager to engage in oversight and, should he turn out to be so dangerously adventurist as George W. Bush has been, he might well have been impeached. Who, after all, would have had any interest in saving him? Indeed, the impeachment would dramatically demonstrate to Americans the dangers of deviating from the sacred two-party system and succumbing to the blandishments of an "independent."

Apologies to my hordes of disappointed readers for the lacuna. My Intertubes were blocked on Tuesday -- or, to put it in less technical terms, our ISP had an all-day, city-wide outage. I had the chance to post from elsewhere in the evening but I said to heck with it. Yesterday, the problem was in the wetware. I think I was just so depressed and disgusted by the completely idiotic and repulsive coverage of politics on TV that my neural circuits were sputtering fecklessly. The link is to Glenn Greenwald, writing coherently.

Anyhow, both the ISP and I have rebooted, so before I do a public health post later today, let me just put in my two cents on the presidential campaign. Nothing terribly original, just the same open letter to Hillary Clinton I know you would write as well.

Dear Senator Clinton: You have already made history as the first woman to run a truly credible campaign for the presidency. You have staked out substantive positions on many issues, and your campaign has simultaneously transcended gender and championed gender equality. Good for you. The next woman to run for president will find the way smoothed by your precedent. Chris Matthews has been chastened (to some extent) and it won't be a novelty, it will just be a presidential campaign.

Voting on whether or not to lift the restraining order (legal jargon for calling off the strike) will take place in person at two meetings, one in NYC and one in LA.

If you cannot attend the meetings, you may vote by proxy. Today, there has been some confusion on what "voting by proxy" means. Faxing in a proxy vote form is NOT the same as voting. You are designating a fellow WGA member to vote

Ralph Nader announced today on Meet the Press that he was running for a third time for the presidency. The reaction so far has been predictable.

Democrats, remembering 2000 and blaming him for the Bush Presidency, are annoyed and a little bit frightened that he is injecting himself into the race. Republicans are secretly delighted, in the hopes that he might swing a few close states like Ohio, or dare one say it, Florida, to the Republican nominee.

I think that Democrats have much less to fear this time. Nader's candidacy means something quite different in 2008 than it does in 2000. In 2000, Nader was one of several factors that put George W. Bush in the White House. And in fairness to him, he was only one factor.

My guess is that there is very little chance that Nader will decide the outcome of the 2008 election; he will probably have very small numbers, as he did in 2004. Third parties who do not quickly displace one of the two major parties (as the Republicans displaced the Whigs in the 1850s) tend not to wear well on repeated attempts.

Yes, another political post. Tomorrow is the Super Tuesday to end all Super Tuesdays, so I don't feel too bad about it. For a political junkie, this has been the most fascinating 6 weeks I've ever seen. Results wildly out of line with the polls, huge lead changes, the death of "momentum" as a meaningful gauge of a candidate's chances, debates more wonkish than I've ever seen, and two candidates I'm super enthusiastic about...

And that's just on the Democratic side. With the Republicans we've got Giuliani's 50 million dollar delegate, Huckabee's shock win in Iowa and all-too-predictable collapse, Romney remembering too late that he had a far better case as a smart business guy than he ever did as the cultural warrior, and the resurgence of McCain (which I'm not enthusiastic about in a strategic sense, but which does make me feel smart for predicting that he would win the nomination way back in November when he looked DOA).

Anyways, I got an e-mail today from a friend in California leaning toward Hillary asking me to make the case for Obama. I ended up with a fairly lengthy response and figured it wouldn't hurt to post it here. Yesterday I made the emotional case. This is the strategic one:

This Wall Street Journal op-ed by Steven Calabresi and John McGinnis argues for John McCain on the grounds that he will appoint the judges who will "restor[e] constitutional government" and prevent Democrats from "threaten[ing] the jurisprudential gains of the past three decades, and provid[ing] new impetus to judicial activism of a kind not seen since the 1960s":
The expected value of any presidential candidate for the future of the American judiciary must be discounted by the probability that the candidate will not prevail in the election. For other kinds of issues, it may be argued that it is better to lose with the perfect candidate than to win with an imperfect one. The party lives to fight another day and can reverse the bad policies of an intervening presidency.

The judiciary is different. On Jan. 20, 2009, six of the nine Supreme Court justices will be over 70. Most of them could be replaced by the next president, particularly if he or she is re-elected. Given the prospect of accelerating gains in modern medical technology, some of the new justices may serve for half a century. Even if a more perfect candidate were somehow elected in 2012, he would not be able to undo the damage, especially to the Supreme Court.

Over at the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson gets what is at stake in the 2008 election-- a reconstructive presidency:

Obama's candidacy not only threatens to obliterate the dream of a Clinton Restoration. It also fundamentally calls into question Bill Clinton's legacy by making it seem . . . not really such a big deal.

That, I believe, is the unforgivable insult. The Clintons picked up on this slight well before Obama made it explicit with his observation that Ronald Reagan had "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."

National Pubic Radio does a lot of those person on the street interviews with prospective primary voters, and while they are not good for my blood pressure, they force me to confront an inconvenient truth. Here are the Republican voters I've heard recently:

• A guy whose number one priority is getting the U.S. out of Iraq. He has decided to vote for John McCain because McCain's a military veteran, and that means he's the guy who knows how to end the war and bring the troops home. One major problem with that theory is that McCain has absolutely no intention of bringing the troops home. On the contrary, he says that he doesn't mind if they stay there for 100 years.
• A woman who says that she's going to vote for Mitt Romney because "he's a committed Christian, and he isn't ashamed of it." Uh, lady -- I've got news for you.
  

On Monday morning in September Mrs. Barrington rolled out a big poster with all the presidents' pictures on it.

Grace Campbell could not believe her eyes.

WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?
To Grace and the other astonished girls, whose living memories barely extend back to George W. Bush's first term, Mrs. Barrington's explanation that there has NEVER been a woman president hits like ice water in the face. Suddenly those girls, used to seeing female faces in positions of prominence, are perplexed.

Grace sat at her desk and stewed. No girls? Who'd ever thought of such a thing!

Finally she raised her hand.

"I've been thinking it over, and I'd like to be president."

According to a blog published by the New York Times, Hillary Clinton has told Iowa voters, “I believe in the Second Amendment, and I don’t see any contradiction between the Second Amendment and laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals.” The irony in this statement is that her husband did a great service to the Republican takeover in 1994 by relentlessly pushing his symbolic "assaualt weapons ban." According to Stanford political scientist Morris Fiorina, it probably cost the Democrats at least six seats in the House (including Speaker Tom Foley from Eastern Washington and Jack Brooks, the long-time Texan head of the House Judiciary Committee), not to mention dooming the candidacy of Rep. Andrews in Maine, who was running against Olympia Snowe (I believe) for the Senate.

It increasingly looks like the super delegates will determine who will be the Democratic Party nominee for President. Some observers have suggested that this is a return to the days when party insiders--influenced by personal or special interests--called the shots in a "smoke filled room." For those who don't know, this is a reference to the selection of Warren Harding in 1920 as the Republican candidate, described briefly here (by William Leuchtenburg):

Although little public attention was paid to Ohio's Senator Warren Harding, as early as February his manager, Harry Daugherty, had predicted that the three strong candidates [General Leonard Wood, Governor Frank Lowden, and Senator Hiram Johnson] would kill one another off and that Harding would get the nod from the Old Guard leaders who would dominate the convention. After the convention deadlocked, Daugherty forecast, the winner would be chosen by a gathering of "fifteen or twenty men, somewhat weary" at "about eleven minutes after two o'clock on Friday morning."

Following up on Mark's previous post, I think the correct analysis of why a Republican dominated court is unlikely to overturn Roe is not that the Justices themselves are primarily motivated to keep the Republican coalition together. Rather, the argument has to do with Presidential motivations in nominating particular Justices to the Supreme Court. That is, if you focus primarily on the motivation of Justices after they get on the bench you are looking in the wrong place for an explanation.

Since the failure of the Bork nomination in 1987, it has become clear that Republican Presidents and the party itself would pay a political cost if the Supreme Court appeared ready to overturn Roe v. Wade. Hence they have chosen people who were likely to weaken Roe but not directly overrule it. Ronald Reagan, for example, appointed Anthony Kennedy as a compromise candidate who could win easy confirmation. Kennedy has turned out to be far more moderate than Robert Bork would likely have been, and indeed, one can hardly imagine Robert Bork writing either Casey or Lawrence v. Texas.