Obama's Shell Game

Goddamn you, Wall Street Journal! Why don't you stop being delivered to my doorstep every morning? The guilty liberal in me demands that I read you before chucking your worthless newsprint ass into the recycling bag, but do you have to be so provocative?!

Today, I finally got an explanation of Obama's delegate count that is far clearer than any of the gibberish I've heard from television hacks who likely don't understand what they're saying, either. The WSJ has it that Obama has built his delegate lead in the small states with lowest voter turnout (do you hear alarm bells yet?). In the big states--which Clinton has just about swept--he has managed to pick up more delegates than she because his organization has concentrated not on the high-turnout general primaries, but on the clubby, exclusive, low-turnout caucuses. I don't claim to know the significance of this strategy, but the result is clear: Clinton has dominated the traditional Democratic states' primaries, Obama has won in a bunch of backwaters that traditionally go Republican in November, and yet Obama holds the commanding lead in the race for the nomination.

Some would question the fairness of this situation (though "fairness" is arguably unrelated to electoral politics). Not the Obama people, of course. The quote in the WSJ is from Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, who smirks, "These aren't our rules, they're the DNC rules, and rather than whining about them (Clinton) should have started organizing."

All well and good, except that the strategy in question doesn't have any relation to organizing voters in the traditional sense. It's a rearguard action, a backdoor ploy meant to exploit a weakness in the democratic process and keep Obama in the race in the early stages no matter what voters in the primaries decided. And though Obama has inarguably attracted a massive number of new, or re-energized, voters to his campaign, that isn't the part that has paid dividends for him. It's this other, unpublicized scheme that has him in the lead, not his hopeful masses of changeriffic acolytes. I've been saying for months, in response to the Obama love-in, that the general election isn't like the primaries; that Obama had better shore up his support if he wants to trounce McCain in November, rather than limp into what already looks to be a trying situation for Bush's shit-shoveling successor. But now, I'm doubly-concerned, because it doesn't appear that Obama really has the base of support we think he does. He has a bunch of delegates that were given to him by DNC lifers who manipulated less-democratic caucuses in order to insulate Obama from the effects of more-democratic primaries. That Obama has the edge in the popular vote is, then, incidental and merely fortuitous, unrelated to his strategy.

Clinton certainly should not have left herself open to being beaten by such a smarmy trick. But, for the Obama campaign to now thump its chest and chide her for not reading the rulebook carefully enough is, in no uncertain terms, the same as taunting anyone who loses on a technicality. When Chris Webber called a timeout he didn't have in the national championship game in 1993, incurring a technical foul and costing Michigan a chance to win the game, I didn't hear the UNC Tar Heels touting the rulebook after the game. I don't see the New England Patriots deriding the St. Louis Rams for not videotaping them, despite the fact that the rulebook apparently allows it. When people lose their appeals for Social Security or disability benefits, because technically they aren't eligible, I never hear the government's lawyers getting in cripples' faces and going, "you should have looked for some loopholes and gray areas, motherfucker! Boo yah!"

Obama has all but won. But if his strategy relied on manipulating caucuses and winning the smallest elections possible, then nobody can say he has earned it.

By the way, just because I have wanted such a thing, here's a list of who won what states (I tend to believe more in the primaries, which approximate general elections in my opinion. Caucuses are for egg heads and party diehards who hate democracy). You may notice that Obama has won the popular vote in exactly 1 sure-thing Democratic state: Illinois. Other than that, he has won Connecticut, DC, Wisconsin, and Hawaii in the "probably will vote Democratic" camp, and has a shot, based on his primary victories, at Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, and Maryland. But everything else Obama has won is in Republican territory, and to quote a very bad movie Jack Nicholson was in, Obama supporters need to "think white and get serious" about his chances in, say, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, Missouri, and the like, in November. It isn't going to happen. Then there's the much bigger question of, if he got his ass kicked by Clinton in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and California, what is Obama going to do to secure those states after she's out of the race? I doubt they voted for her in the primaries simply because she is a Democrat--they voted for Clinton instead of Obama, so he may not just inherit those voters when Clinton steps aside. Where will the caucus ace-in-the-hole be then, David Plouffe?

Seriously, inquiring minds want to know. Where's the substance to this campaign?