I was in Europe on the night of the 2000 vote. As it became clear that who actually won the most votes would be something hard to define - and moreover that the person who won fewer might actually win - it spawned endless defensive explanations from me along the lines of "we really do care about democracy, it's just a funny artifact of the system at the moment."
It didn't look good.
And while Obama will (vastly likely) be the nominee, the way we count is so screwed up that there will be no demonstrable resolution to the issue.
As I wrote what was initially a comment on Jerome's diary, the full picture of the current efforts to define the race by popular votes sank in. The more those among the voting Democratic publis - and it's leaders - argue the Popular Vote the more clearly it will add fuel to the fire stoked against us leading up to the GE.
It won't kill us - the Republican party is in utter disarray and couldn't win a spitting match at the moment - but it is a flaw we need to work out so it doesn't come up again.
-chris
where the votes can be counted. You simply cannot accurately count them in any primary due to the caucasus, so this argument doesn't really hold water.
It's never come up before as an issue, but we have never had (to my knowledge) the subject pushed adamantly by one of the Democratic contenders before. Certainly not against the backdop of the now-infamous 2000 GE.
There seems no end in sight to this being made Issue #1 for a large part of the Democratic party.
It could become a lingering sore after the nomination process is finally over. Particularly if it's somehow taken all the way to Denver.
I hope you're not complaining about Republicans voting for a candidate. Without them Clinton might not have won Texas.
My point is not to pick a fight that is already raging, but to point to the unavoidable fuzziness of the math behind the whole debate.
Do you believe that the numbers can be put down in any way that is not open to debate?
