Too bad it is being wasted on the readers of salon the vast majority of whom only seem to care about Obama getting the nomination with no thought about how he can possibly win the GE with such tried and true red states as LA, Alaska, et al, especially after all he's done to ensure that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell to carry FL or MI.

Are you really that mad at people who want Barack to be president more than Hilary? Are those really the kind of people you want to blame for this misery? If it really comes down to that, you've turned me around 100% and Hilary's got my vote! But I'm afraid that you are just kidding, you know, mocking the irrational anger that this primary is stirring up and that you really don't believe that people who prefer Obama are good examples of why things are to rough in our country.

Either way you are kind of a genius!

Sean Wilentz's reasoning is well off the mark and far short of his usual standard. Yes, the Democratic nominating process is illogical and borderline insane; it should be changed for 2012. However, it is the set of rules both candidates were forced to play by. If the rules had been different, both campaigns would surely have run different campaigns aimed at maximizing their respective delegate counts. As it is, Obama has outplayed Clinton.

As for Florida and Michigan, they have only themselves to blame. Democratic leaders in both states chose to reschedule their primaries knowing the consequences. They played chicken with the rules and lost. If their contests would have counted, Obama would have campaigned there. (And Obama did not advertise in Florida; he made a national cable buy ahead of Super Tuesday, which his strategy and budget made possible.)

No one gets to change the rules in the middle of the game just because they're losing.

If I understand it correctly, the article's premise is:

Proposition 1: The general election will be decided on a winner-take-all basis.

Proposition 2: If the delegates in the Democratic primaries had been awarded on a winner-take-all basis, then Clinton would have won.

Conclusion: If Clinton were the Democratic nominee then she would win the general election.

The only way in which this rubric makes sense is:

(1) if the population of voters in the Democratic primaries is an accurate sample of the population of voters in the general election, which is obviously not true, because there will be at least some non-Democrats voting in the general election, and

(2) if voting for Clinton in the primaries equates to voting against Obama in the general election.

I wish that you democrats and clintonites in general would stop all of your crybaby rhetoric about the poor disenfranchised voters in Mich and Fla. They are not, I repeat, not disenfranchised people, they broke the friggin rules. And you democrats aint got sense enough to leave that alone. You think that the rules don't apply to you, and when they do, you cry like a bunch of blubbering babies about it. Wahh! We got our votes taken away! Well, both parties agreed to it until it didn't fit the aganda for their campaign anymore. Wahh! We can't get a candidate. It's your undemocratic broken system, fix it! Any system that awards the loser of a state Ie...texas, Missouri, Nevada more delegates than the winner deserves to be stuck in aprotracted drawn out race that splits their party into two halves. And while I'm ranting, any party that gives SUPERDELEGATES more than one voice in the primaries is whacked to begin with. What happened to one man one vote. These delegates all 795 are getting two votes, and getting to decide who you want as a candidate because they know that most democraps don't have the sense to decide on their own. Thank God my candidate has been chosen already so I can sit back and watch you bleeding heart liberals cry all over each other

GO MCCAIN or MCBUSH if you really prefer.

P.S. How can you clintonites stand to vote for such a bald faced liar. Whats the total now? eight lies ten she's been caught in, much less her philandering disbarred husband that you all seem to love so much. LOSERS!!

When Hillary declared her run for the presidency, she knew damn well that the Democratic primary wasn't a winner-take-all system. She never said a word, not that it would've made any difference, about being opposed to that primary system. She also agreed, like all other candidates, to the sanctions against Florida and Michigan. The bizarre whining by Clinton supporters at this point in the campaign, when she clearly has no chance of becoming the nominee about the injustice of the primary system she agreed to participate in and about the Obama camp "refusal' to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates are a proof that just like Hill&Bill, Clinton supporters are a bunch of spoiled narcissists who would rather see McBush as president than not get their way.

I was JUST about to post the same thing!

So far I count 9 first time pro-clinton posts (and the ALL sound suspiciously similar ;)

so a hearty and healthy howdy to:

hillarygirl

4hillary

apounders

lisaindecatur

keelyjazz

fumiste

romast

Adesawa

dcordes

(i'm sure there's more...but those are the ones i found after I noticed all the unfamiliar names popping up here)

(this article is utter bunk - as has been eloquently noted by many folks smarter than me:)

cheers

You can't equate her success under the current system with how well she would have done under another system. If we were under a winner-take-all system then Obama and Edwards and the rest of the candidates would have campaigned differently and the numbers would be different.

Maybe if Iowa were winner take all that would have been a death blow to Clinton who came in third? She might not have done as well after if she got crushed there.

Or maybe in winner take all Edwards wouldn't have dropped out before February 5, and those numbers would be different.

The truth is you have no way of knowing how the votes would have gone, how the campaigns would have run their efforts in different states, or how the media and public would have reacted to the different numbers that resulted from the different rules and actions.

It always bugs me when allegedly smart people say, "The Mets would have won if that call in the second inning was different," conveniently ignoring that if the call in the second inning was different then innings 3-9 would have been different to!

But that's baseball, and not that important. You're talking about selecting the leader of our country, and that makes your article particularly embarrassing and damaging.