Posted on 10/20/2016 5:26:07 AM PDT by KeyLargo
June 03, 2008 Why Hillary 2008 is like George W. Bush 2000
Brendan Nyhan Political scientist and media critic
On WashingtonPost.com, Chris Cillizza reports that the Clinton campaign is denying an AP story stating that Hillary will concede tonight.
More importantly, though, notice how Cillizza describes her rationale for continuing:
The Clinton campaign, in fact, released a statement insisting that the Associated Press story that fueled this maelstrom was not correct; "Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening," the statement asserted.
Language is important here. An acknowledgment of Obama securing the delegates he needs to formally become the party's nominee is NOT the same thing as a concession by Clinton.
Over the past few days, Clinton has focused almost exclusively on the popular vote count -- all but ignoring the delegate race in a seeming concession of her inability to overcome Obama in that metric.
Therefore, Clinton may well use the national spotlight tonight to do two things: acknowledge Obama has the delegates he needs while also trumpeting her popular vote edge. Clinton could then spend the next 24 hours (or so) taking the pulse of committed and uncommitted superdelegates about their willingness (or lack thereof) to take her side.
A little-known fact about the 2000 race is that George W. Bush's campaign planned to challenge a Gore victory in the Electoral College if Bush won the popular vote. Ironically, of course, Bush won under that exact scenario.
In the last few weeks, Hillary has followed in Bush's (almost) footsteps by attempting to discard the agreed-upon institutional metric for determining the winner of the race and undermine the rule-based outcome. Beyond the obvious absurdity of changing the rules at the end of the campaign, the problem is that we can't know what would have happened had either campaign been conducted solely on the basis of the popular vote.
PS Setting aside the debate over the different ways you can add up the caucus and primary popular vote totals, what makes Hillary's argument more absurd is that Democrats prefer Obama in national polls.
But Wallace could have asked Hillary if Trump were to win the Popular vote, considering that in 2000 and 2008 you wanted to abolish the Electoral College and instead accept the results of the Popular vote would you do that now?
I thought it was ironic how she attacked the Bushes for so many of our financial woes - especially since the Bushes have come out for her....Priceless!
10-27-2012
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — Shortly after the 2000 election, as a newly-minted Senator-elect, Clinton called for direct elections of the president. She argued the country has changed since the Electoral College was put in place.
“We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago,” Clinton said at a news conference.
“I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”
The Hill.com
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