Nevada & South Carolina Primary

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-01-20 03:22am

The mob vote is essentially the 'will of the people' vote, but I do agree that a system of voting by representative is a legitimate way to do it, especially if these are people you've put into power to represent your areas--and thus have a vested interest in keeping popular. I was just stating, as you saw, that it confuses people when a person doesn't win popularly but wins anyway.

A large amount of this can be attributed to the twofaced way in which we conduct our electoral process (public voting done in order to tell our electoral reps who we would prefer they vote for, or have to vote for in some cases), but it's really just bad education on the people's part. Honestly, I've been a political junkie lately, and I can't even begin to keep up with all the stuff that's available for me to read. This oversaturation of information is highly detrimental to my ability to decide who I want, and both big media and little media (blogs and such) are of questionable quality. And I'm a pretty intelligent guy afterall, so it's good that my vote isn't REALLY as valuable as someone whose job it is to run my county.

But that's a sidetrack. Regardless, gotta win those delegates.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2008-01-20 03:25am

Flagg wrote:
Guardsman Bass wrote:Oops! Forgot about the Democratic winner in Nevada, which you asked about. Barack Obama was the winner (although he gathered less support in the Caucus), since he gained 13 delegates for his efforts while Hillary Clinton only brought in 12 (not that it is much of a victory).
Yeah, but that's not what the entire fucking media is saying. They are all saying she "won" Nevada, which is a blatant lie. She won more popular votes which don't matter for dick, as opposed to delegates which actually do matter.

I'm not disagreeing with you about the media being shitheaded on the whole business, but that's the media for you. It's a lot easier and sexier to report "Hillary Clinton comes back from Political Death, is she a New Comeback Kid??!!!" than "Hillary Clinton narrowly wins popular vote against low expectations, ties with Barack Obama for delegates from New Hampshire".

I wonder had the situation been reversed, with Obama winning the popular vote and Clinton the delegates, if the MSM would be running things the same way. Part of me wants to think that they are just more comfortable with a Clinton nomination, but most of me thinks they are just too fucking lazy. Then again, actually reporting on facts means they have to take time away from horse race bullshit.

I just think they're too fucking lazy to talk about the delegate system, along with what I listed above. Plus, it's far more interesting (to them) to have a contentious race, than to point out that Hillary actually has far more delegates overall than Barack Obama because she's courted so many super-delegates. Or that Obama won a real victory in Nevada even though he lost by a non-negligable percentage in Nevada.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2008-01-20 03:27am

I ought to add - I made a mistake on the number of delegates McCain won. He won delegates in Nevada as well, so his total should be higher than 19 (or does that include the Nevada delegates? I need to go back and check sources).

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-01-20 03:31am

MSNBC ran some information about the 13/12 Obama win in Nevada, but a lot of people consider them anti-Clinton anyway, so I guess you can lump that under 'assumed bias'. Honestly, the lack of a coherent feeling to this campaign drives me crazy. If you check online, there are small bastions of support for each candidate, with one group I know of calling Edwards by the initials JRE. I don't get why, it makes him sound like some sort of cult figure. "I'm still voting for JRE!" It's just a mess. Part of it is that the whole system is gone nutty, but that everyone is taking EXTREMELY bitter stands in this fight.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2008-01-20 03:32am

Sorry about that, I found out better totals here.

McCain came out ahead with 23 delegates (four from Nevada, 19 from South Carolina). Romney came next, with 18 delegates. Of course, if you want to take into account money and time spent campaigning, then Romney probably got more bang for his buck.

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2008-01-20 04:04am

So who won, Hillary or Obama? NBC's going all about Hillery.

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2008-01-20 04:11am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:So who won, Hillary or Obama? NBC's going all about Hillery.

Obama won more delegates, so Obama is the winner. Hillary just got more popular votes, but the popular vote means jack and shit.

Androsphinx · Post by **Androsphinx** » 2008-01-20 04:38am

Flagg wrote:
Shroom Man 777 wrote:So who won, Hillary or Obama? NBC's going all about Hillery.
Obama won more delegates, so Obama is the winner. Hillary just got more popular votes, but the popular vote means jack and shit.

Hillary won the popular vote (last I heard, 51%-45%), which perhaps suprisingly is a better indication of her popularity, and what is going to happen at the next primary, and the one after that. So this is a better result for her than for Obama.

And I don't see how anyone who saw the pre-NH coverage can think that news-stations are Hillary partisans.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-01-20 04:58am

Well, the next one in particular is South Carolina, which has an unusually (for the nation) large black voter presence, so it's going to be highly contentious. CNN's little delegate tally actually has Obama ahead at the moment, but with Hillary's likeability ratings in such constant flux (a big issue when it comes to personality voters) and Obama's comments on a variety of topics sometimes stunningly unguarded (his comments about Reagan, while true, sound awful) mean that things can get extremely wacky.

In any case, the race is still wide open, and it's basically Hillary's to lose. Should she continue to make herself available to the press and people, and therefore be seen much more 'human' than before, then her biggest threats come from actual political attacks--something neither of the other candidates have been able to successfully launch yet. The one time Edwards or Obama seemed to get good digs in on her, she followed it up with a lot of humanity-raising moments that seemed to cause some degree of backlash. It may require some careful handling to successfully attack the 'woman' without it triggering alarm bells, but that's something for Edwards and Obama to figure out.

Guardsman Bass · Post by **Guardsman Bass** » 2008-01-20 05:25am

Yuck. Apparently there is a weird qualifier to the Republican Nevada Caucus; apparently, you don't actually win the delegates' votes in the actual caucus, since the delegates are allocated at the state convention later on. And the Caucus results aren't binding.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2008-01-20 11:26am

Guardsman Bass wrote:Yuck. Apparently there is a weird qualifier to the Republican Nevada Caucus; apparently, you don't actually win the delegates' votes in the actual caucus, since the delegates are allocated at the state convention later on. And the Caucus results aren't binding.

Same is true of the Iowa caususes IIRC and pretty much all of the caucus systems. They only generate the local delegates to the state convention which selects the final delegates to the actual national convention. At the same time since the folks slected to be state delegates tend to be heavily partisan for their candidate its dificult for there to be an actual noticeable shift from the stated results.