My mind keeps traveling back to the images on the screen of members of the Rules and ByLaws Committee doing a painstaking job on Saturday. Few of the people were recognizable to this non-TV-watcher. But one stood out, and that was a Hillary supporter from California named (I think) Alice Huffman. Or maybe Alicia Huffman. She was a trouper. She made a wonderful conciliatory statement. Anyone out there can enlighten me on who she is when she's not sitting in a noisy meeting in Washington, more than that she's a Dem party leader in California?
Ed Kilgore takes a look at the aftermath of the Puerto Rico primary and writes:
This outcome will once again create a dialogue-of-the-deaf over the officially meaningless but symbolically significant (at least according to HRC supporters) total popular vote issue. Most pro-HRC counts exclude four Caucus states where raw votes were not officially tabulated, and also give Obama zero votes in MI, where his supporters were forced to vote for "Uncommitted." Most pro-Obama counts include estimates of the four caucus vote totals and either exclude MI as tainted or give Obama all the "Uncommitted" votes. (Another, by RenaRF at DailyKos, excludes primaries or caucuses in jurisdictions that don't participate in the general election, denying HRC her PR margin and Obama some small victories elsewhere).
There is no such thing as an "official" popular vote count, since again, it really doesn't matter in the official nomination process. But with only SD and MT--two small states where Obama is expected to win but not overwhelmingly--still left to vote, it's reasonably sure that both campaigns will claim a total popular vote victory after Tuesday. The two things no one can deny is that it was, in retrospect, an awfully close race, but one in which Barack Obama will finish with a lead in pledged delegates, and barring some implosion in his general-election standing, the nomination. The general feeling is that he'll cross the threshold to a total majority of pledged and announced-superdelegate votes by the end of this week.
The notion -- which lots of Democrats seem to cling to -- of "one person one vote" and "every vote counts" is naive. State parties set up their own rules as to how much weight votes are given as those votes translate into delegates to county conventions, into delegates to state conventions, and finally into delegates to the national convention. As the process moves forward, one's precious vote gets a haircut, a shave, some Botox treatments, new clothes, and a diet. The same kind of a process repeats itself when the Electoral College sits down to decide the election.
Stuff happens. We can change that. But so far we haven't changed it. When I became acquainted with how the Democratic Party of the State of Texas operates (ohmigod), it became very clear that every goddamn American in every goddamn state of the Union is going to have a different plan for making his or her vote count fairly.
I surely do hope we learn to use the word "disenfranchisement" with a little less self pity unless we plan to devote our lives to pushing the large boulder of voting reform up the high hill of accumulated self-interest.
