And if Hillary Clinton manages to seize the nomination, blow up the party, and loses to McCain by a wider margin than Obama (according to current polls) that would prove?

The reason why McCain is leading, marginally against Barack Obama and not so marginally against Hillary Clinton, is because the Democratic Party has no nominee. A problem exacerbated by Hillary Clinton herself. Again, it has nothing to do with the primary process and everything to do with one of the Candidates

Clinton supporters are a wee bit delusional in think that if Barack Obama loses against John McCain the Democratic Party will see the error of its ways and parade "Hill-Dog" on its shoulders to victory in 2012.

If Barack Obama loses in the general Hillary Clinton will be blamed and the name Clinton will be poison for 100 years. The Russians will have to come in and build a lead tomb around Hillary Clinton's Senate career. A good Presidency and a decent Junior Senator from New York will sit next to Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic Party Hall of Shame.

Under a winner-take-all primary system, Hillary Clinton would have a wide lead over Barack Obama, *if Obama suddenly turned into a complete idiot and didn't adjust his strategy to the hypothetical winner-take-all system*. This is a really silly assertion. Barack's running a campaign designed to win in the actual Democratic primary system, and, unlike Hillary, he's doing an excellent job. If the game was different, the strategies would be as well, but the players' relative abilities would still be the same.

It's obvious from reading Prof. Wilentz' article that he's nothing more than a shill for the Clinton campaign. I'm not sure who made the decision at Salon to run his article, but, given the fact that there are nearly 700 comments posted already, most of which are firmly against his article, I trust that Salon has the message that its readers do not desire to read blatant political hit pieces from the candidates. For all of the reasons expressed already, Wilentz is wrong. I agree with one commenter who stated that Wilentz doesn't deserve to be on the same page with Glenn Greenwald.

Imagine the cheek of Obama! He's happy to play by the rules since the rules have him ahead.

Just what are you smoking?

Let's try the contrapositive here: the Clinton camp is interested in any way to "re-interpret" the rules so she would appear to be in the lead.

Brilliant!

Mind you, Wilentz isn't arguing that Clinton has gotten more votes than Obama: she hasn't. He's arguing that Clinton should be ahead even though she hasn't gotten more votes than Obama, since the Democratic party should use a "winner-takes-all" system, in spite of the obvious fact that such a system makes it far easier for the less popular candidate to win. Clinton's candidacy would make a neat example for this bizarro universe that Wilentz wants.

Wonhyo wrote-

"Obama's popular vote margin is too small to claim a popular mandate. The process by which Obama has a lead over Clinton threatens to nominate the candidate that is less competitive against McCain."

In what way would Obama be less competitive against McCain than Clinton? She doesn't drive extraordinary turnout among any demographic. She relies entirely on the old base of Democrats. Obama gets huge turnout from youth and minority voters, and they are getting registered to participate in November in historic numbers. And, Obama has consistenly polled stronger against McCain than Clinton does. He has won more states, more primaries, more states that caucus, more pledged delegates, and leads in the popular vote. Do you really think that the superdelegates are going to overlook all that and just trump it with a vote for Clinton? Sheesh....

I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but the idea that if you used different rules to count the votes that have already been cast to reach a new set of results is ridiculous on its face. That logic assumes that Clinton and Obama would have run the exact same campaigns in a winner-take-all system as they have in the admittedly convoluted system that actually exists. That assumption simply doesn't past muster.

Clinton made the mistake of concentrating only on big states while Obama wisely made himself viable in every contest. He, or his staff at least, understood that competing in every state is important because there are delegates to be claimed everywhere. Without looking at any hard data, I can be confident that there have been very few states in which Clinton dominated Obama to the tune of a 20-point victory, while the reverse has happened quite often. That's no accident. That's campaign strategy.

Obama's ability to play by the rules and win shouldn't be portrayed simply as him exploiting the system, an argument that many Clinton supporters have not been shy about employing when claiming that superdelegates have the right to cast their vote for whomever they prefer. These delegate-counting rules were the ones in place when Clinton and Obama began their campaigns, and it's absurd for them (or a surrogate hack of a writer, like Wilentz here) to rail against them 16 months after the fact.

As per usual, Clinton's supporters will say anything, no matter how nonsensical, to get her elected. Why am I not surprised?

Did Hillary Clinton's campaign commission this piece? It sure sounds that way. From the start, it's clear the author has an axe to grind against Obama, to the extent that's he not afraid of using stupid arguments that don't make sense if you don't share his innate prejudices and presumptions. The author comes across like a Donald Rumsfeld: clearly very intelligent in the "book-smart" sense, but lacking in common sense and connection with reality.

Without getting into all the different groundless arguments and non-reality-based opinions, let's just consider these two:

1. Everyone knew the rules: caucuses in certain states, proportional allocation, the punishments of Michigan and Florida, etc. Obama knew the rules going in. Clinton knew the rules going in. The author criticizes Obama for pointing to the rules to justify his lead. What about critizing Clinton for whining about the rules in the middle of the campaign? Why didn't Clinton criticize the rules before the campaign started, if they're so patently unfair? Also, how is it undemocratic that Obama is ahead in the popular vote, when most people recognize that the Electoral College is undemocratic? Isn't proportional allocation more democratic?

2. There is nothing in the Constitution about political parties or how they should select candidates. If a party wants to give a monkey a dartboard and use the outcome to select a candidate, it can do that. These are not elections in the proper sense of the term. These are candidate selection processes conducted by private organizations, which happen to choose voting as the method and arrange with the states to conduct the voting. To say that voters in Michigan and Florida, or in states that use caucuses, are being disenfranchised is absurd. Disenfranchisement means not being permitted to vote in an actual election that results in electing an actual candidate to an actual office. I don't know how to say it more clearly than that. If you don't like how your party selects candidates, reform your party or join another one. But don't complain that the selection is process is undemocratic: it has fuck-all to do with democracy.

I'm also tired of the "Clinton wins big states, Obama wins small states and hard red states, so he can't win" argument. Recall that John Kerry won primaries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, etc. Shit lot of good it did him. It's completely spurious to cite polls that currently show Clinton winning the electoral votes of these states. The election isn't for another 7 months!