Evan Baye; Let's Move The Goalposts...Again....NYT article

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/politics/24campaign.html?_r=1&ex=1364097600&en=80a0be31ed248fb0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Clinton Backer Points to Electoral College Votes as New Measure
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: March 24, 2008

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, proposed another gauge Sunday by which superdelegates might judge whether to support Mrs. Clinton or Senator Barack Obama.

He suggested that they consider the electoral votes of the states that each of them has won.

“So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States,” Mr. Bayh said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

In a primary, of course, electoral votes are not relevant, but the Clinton campaign is trying to use them as an unofficial measure of strength.

So far, Mrs. Clinton has won states with a total of 219 Electoral College votes, not counting Florida and Michigan, while Mr. Obama has won states with a total of 202 electoral votes.

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, is ahead of Mrs. Clinton, of New York, in most other leading indicators: popular vote (by 700,000 votes out of 26 million cast, excluding caucuses and the disputed Florida and Michigan results, a difference of about 3 percent); delegates (1,622.5 compared with 1,472.5 for her, according to The New York Times’s count); and number of states (27 compared with 14 for her, excluding Florida and Michigan). The opinion polls are mixed but give Mr. Obama a slight edge.

Asked how she could win the nomination, Mr. Bayh said: “Well, I do think the popular vote is important. But that’s a circular argument. It brings us back to Florida and Michigan.”

He said he would also factor in electability and momentum, then added: “But ultimately, you know, if you look at the aggregate popular vote, and as we all recall in 2000, to our, as Democrats, great sorrow, we do elect presidents based upon the Electoral College.”

The Clinton camp has argued that Mrs. Clinton’s having won the big states should be an important factor when considering her electability.

“Presidential elections are decided on electoral votes,” a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, said in an e-mail message.

But Mr. Wolfson said superdelegates would also be looking at the popular vote when determining which candidate to support.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said that the idea of using the Electoral College as a metric was specious because the Democratic nominee, regardless of whom it was, would almost certainly win California and New York.

Many Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bayh, have opposed the Electoral College in the past, particularly after 2000, when Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush, who became president, even though Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, had won the popular vote nationwide.

At the time, Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, said, “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.”

and hope he's not successfully targeted once we have a comfortable majority.

Conservatives are the problem. They're never part of any solution.

but the person he's supporting-I'm sick of supposed democrats acting like fucking republicans

so I can't agree with you there. However, her campaign team is the same awful bunch who packaged both Gore and Kerry as milquetoasts who would never upset the status quo. We know that not to be true in their cases. It might be true in hers, but we are not going to know that unless she either catches a clue and gets rid of them or the election comes and goes and they retreat back into their lobbying jobs.

Not the first time.

In the absence of a rule dictating how unpledged delegates should vote at the Denver convention, adding a rule saying how they must vote or saying they must irrevocably commit prior to the convention would be changing the rules.

Not that anybody's making any arguments for formal rules. Why, no person who respects the process would even try to say there are unwritten rules: Things like popular vote, # of states won, number of pledged delegates, or electoral votes compel and constrain supers from exercising free will.

And who would actually even suggest compelling some sort of vote among "supers" prior to the convention?

Pshaw. Nobody would be so arrogant as to do that, would they? I mean, other than arrogant, power-obsessed politicians and their supporters, but surely no dems fall into either category.

and lots of other Dems are having similar "cold feet" about the rush to coronate Obama. If the goal is to win in November... then electoral votes need to be considered.

Hey, did any of you hear Lionel today? On Air America? About how delusional Obama supporters have become??? All kinds of callers saying "the American electorate is smarter than to fall for the Rev. Wright scandal." And Lionel just kept saying.... "then you don't know the American electorate."

And her unfavorables just keep getting higher as more people find reasons to question what she is trying to pull

You are a ridiculous person, Evan Bayh. Shut up and go away.

I'm sick of the goalpost moving; I don't trust people who want to move goalposts. Last time, it got us Lieberman.....

It's truly frightening how many people she's convinced to lie for her.