The process problem

Math. It’s a science, not an art. You combine numbers to get another number that is the definite and only correct answer. Learning the basic principles of the subject begins in preschool, with counting and then addition. There, in the innocence of the classroom, the two processes produce objective answers. But that is, of course, before any of the children learn about politics.

This year, the Democratic Party has managed to turn math into a true art form. It seems every major news outlet has a different interpretation of the number of elected delegates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have, and even the number of pledged superdelegates can vary.

And now, thanks to the Pennsylvania primary, the math has become even more muddled. Since Tuesday, Clinton has been trumpeting an argument that is, to say the least, a bit stronger than, “I’ve won all the big states that Democrats need to win in November.”

She now says that adding up all the votes cast since the primary contests began shows that most of the people who went to the polls have cast their votes for her.

Clinton is winning the popular vote, if you include Michigan and Florida.

But even that claim comes with one important subtraction: all the uncommitted votes in Michigan must be taken away from Obama. They must be considered exactly what they were labeled – uncommitted, and not symbols of votes for Clinton’s competitor. If x=Obama, he’s winning both in delegates and in the popular vote.

Nonetheless, Pennsylvania was a step forward for the Clinton campaign. Mathematically, she made the contest closer, edging herself away from the evidence for her to drop out.

And that’s why Pennsylvania was bad for the Democratic Party. It produced ugly and frivolous sides of both the candidates, and of two debate moderators, and caused a lot of fatigue for those of us looking toward November. But it just gave Clinton more reason to keep the exhausting process going.

She’s still hopeful that she’ll be able to make an argument, mathematical or otherwise, to woo enough superdelegates to override the elected delegates from a man who may or may not have won the popular vote.

Of course we won’t know until May 31 how the artistic Democratic Party is going to count the popular votes in Michigan and Florida. The Rules Committee on that day must choose one of a number of solutions while not appearing to pull the rug out from under one of the two candidates or to be discounting the will of people who went to the polls. But we won’t know if any compromise will make a difference until the superdelegates make up their minds.

And Clinton has pledged to keep fighting until the last primary vote is counted, a scenario that could be the last vendetta for her but the first step toward a Democratic defeat.

It’s hard to ignore all the talk since Pennsylvania of Obama’s magical transformational appeal starting to wear away. He was supposed to be able to bring all types of people together under his umbrella of change, but places like Pennsylvania remind everyone of another hard-and-fast mathematical principle: division.

The lines along which Obama and Clinton voters break have been evident for a while, but Pennsylvania just solidified the divide. It proved that, even with plenty of time to spend with voters, Obama cannot quite “close the deal,” as Clinton has been saying, with those white, working-class voters, a constituency that McCain is planning to contest if he’s up against Obama in the fall.

According to exit polls, 15 percent of Pennsylvania Democrats who voted in the primaries would choose McCain for president in November if Obama was the alternative. Against Clinton, McCain pulls in 11 percent of those votes.

That’s a pretty strong statement in this time of trauma for Democrats. And don’t forget those voters who might just stay home to express their dissatisfaction.

So after Pennsylvania, the Democrats are in a nasty place, where it’s becoming all too evident that neither candidate carries with him or her a full package of voters that can be counted on the win the presidency. I don’t blame it on either candidate or any of the voters.

I blame it on math.

This year is really showing how the Democratic National Committee’s formula for producing a nominee is just inefficient. It may have worked just fine in the past, but that was before anyone studied it this closely. It’s putting too much emphasis and pressure on the last variables, the superdelegates, and it’s dragging the process out too long for the party’s own good.
Notice that no one seems to be questioning the maverick McCain’s appeal to voters.

But for all the negatives Pennsylvania and this extended contest as a whole have brought, I can see a possible positive. Now, the eventual Democratic nominee has indications stronger than just polling of the blocs of voters he or she will need to win over come September. Each campaign knows exactly which variables in the equation they have to study for the final exam in the fall, and this could give Democrats a slight edge over the GOP.

Of course, though, there’s always the chance that the divisions we saw in Pennsylvania will just stay that way, and the Democrat will end up without votes from a huge bloc that just couldn’t be convinced.

Through the matrix of all the political math this election season has seen, there is an answer to one problem that most people can agree with.

A Democratic candidate minus the support of the party’s entire base equals a McCain presidency.

A "leap" of faith

Over spring break, I was at a bar in Philadelphia, near the University of Pennsylvania campus, standing with four people – two of my friends and two people whom I had met about 10 minutes earlier. Upon finding out I was a journalism major, one of them asked if I kept a blog. I told him I did, and we exchanged URLs. Once we all got our strawberry margaritas, we started talking about the presidential election.

“Who do you like, Hillary or Obama?” my fellow blogger asked.

Everyone, including him, said Obama. Then it came around to me.

“I don’t know,” I began, and then explained how conflicted I was about the two Democratic candidates, about how I felt when I was filling out my absentee ballot prior to Super Tuesday.

I went on until I was interrupted by the guy who got me going in the first place. He cut across the circle, nearly putting his finger in my face.

“Did you blog about this?”

“No,” I responded, cocking my head and falling silent.

Well, now is my chance, so here it goes.

***

When I was sitting at the bar in my kitchen, the long ballot spread on the cold faux marble, I stared for at least 20 minutes at the empty bubbles next to the names “Hillary Rodham Clinton” and “Barack Obama.” I knew I would have unwavering support for either candidate in the general election; this was just a battle between what I wanted and what I thought the country wanted – and needed.

In February, I had, more or less, the same debate I have with myself now as the fight barrels on toward Pennsylvania.

It’s just my vindictive, angry and jaded self talking, but I really would like to see Hillary as the Democratic nominee. I think she is the candidate with the most solid policies and the most determination to get them into practice.
Plus, Republicans really hate her.

So when I think about Hillary’s winning the nomination, I’m vengefully happy because if she can win the presidency, I cannot wait to stick it to the GOP.

I imagine myself getting the same rush as when I’m honking my car’s horn and displaying my middle finger to someone who had cut me off on the freeway. It’s not exactly a flattering picture.

But that is the climax of the story. Before I can get to that feeling, Hillary has to win the White House, and thinking about her path there makes me nervous.

I’m scared that with the help of the superdelegates she will disenfranchise too many Democratic voters by stealing the primary. I’m scared that so many of the people who stood in record-length lines at Democratic primaries will simply stay home in November. I’m scared McCain will get away with nearly all the independents.

Looking at my ballot back in February, I really felt Obama had a better chance at winning in November, and I feel even more so now that Democrats will be running against McCain.

But I’m much too jaded to buy into all this talk about uniting the country and bipartisan approaches to this country’s problems.

I may be a lost cause, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe Obama’s rhetoric can have a profound effect on many others. He would bring a much-needed aura to the presidency; his inspiration can get people involved, can get people to care.

So when I think about Obama’s winning the nomination, I’m happy because I think if he can win the presidency our country is really turning a new leaf, even if I am in the corner stomping my foot and sulking because I think Republicans got off easy.
But, again, I am nervous.

To me, having Obama as the Democratic nominee is like buying a really good fake Louis Vuitton bag from a street vendor in New York – it looks great and attracts a lot of attention, but it might fall apart faster than the real thing.

Hillary’s road to the presidency is visibly rocky, while it appears Obama could coast along nearly without a bump in sight.

I will admit he does have a way about him that lets slip-ups or potential disasters roll off his back. But I can’t help but feel at least some weaknesses are hidden, and I’m scared of what I don’t know about him. Hard as I try, I cannot shake the feeling that he could be flimsy, that he could be crushed under the Republican attack machine.

Maybe I have bought in too much to the Clintons’ dirty games, but I can’t help but think Obama is a question mark, a gamble. And I am not one who tends to take a risk just on faith – especially when Karl Rove has a fresh chance to label the personality that built that faith as out of touch and elitist.

***

Back in February, I took a pencil and marked the bubble next to Hillary’s name. After I licked the envelope, I laid it on my desk, ready to be notarized and sent to the battleground state of Missouri.

But, as I looked at it sitting there, I felt that sending it off would have been a betrayal of everyone who, unlike me, could put their bitterness aside and dare to believe in change.

My ballot is still sitting on my desk – a reminder of the closest I could come to a leap of faith.

The McCain message

In a year when Democrats are making history – putting out two possible candidates for president who, if elected, would represent an important progressive milestone for America – the Republicans are presenting voters with more of the same. A white male. A war veteran. A Republican who talks of lowering taxes.

It doesn’t get much more typical than that.

Yet somehow, despite his typical surface, John McCain has an atypical reputation and image with voters, which might be the only thing that will keep him afloat come the general election.

This is a year of particular unrest and dissatisfaction with the current Republican administration. It’s a year when we are spending billions of dollars and have marked the loss of thousands of lives in an unpopular war. It’s a year people are blaming the president and his cabinet for an economy sinking toward recession.

It’s a year when a presidential candidate of the incumbent party facing one of two historic and vibrant candidacies of the other side should be dead in the water.

But McCain is not.

Real Clear Politics, which averages poll numbers taken by various organizations, currently has McCain tied with Barack Obama in a general-election match up (McCain with 44.6 percent and Obama with 44.8 percent). A McCain-Hillary Clinton match up yields a McCain win, 46.6 percent to 44 percent.

Of course we have to keep in mind that this is just a snapshot of feelings right now, when the Democrats are still fighting each other while McCain is free to travel the country on a simple biography tour. But, with these kinds of numbers, it could go either way in the general, depending really on which side brings out most effective attacks.

It might be easy for Democrats to attack someone who represents all the traditional Republican ideals. But McCain is a maverick, someone who doesn’t collect blanket hate from one large group (like Clinton does).

The 2008 Almanac of American Politics summed it up: “It appears to be [McCain’s] view that members of Congress, like members of the military, should serve the national interest honorably and without reference to political considerations.” That’s something voters like to see.

Because he is different and somewhat unpredictable, McCain can, theoretically, turn the conversation about him in any direction he wants. And of course the GOP machine has a reputation for its mastery of public relations; Karl Rove is already out there saying Obama is someone only rich, snotty, elitist liberals like.

I could already see the strategy forming when I spoke with Dan Schnur, the national communication director for McCain’s 2000 campaign.

McCain’s party is blamed for the bad economy. But, that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing on the campaign trail.

“Voters are particularly wary of having their taxes increased,” Schnur told me.

A Pew poll found that the most popular word to describe McCain among respondents was “old.” He will be 72 years old on inauguration day, the oldest president ever to be sworn into his first term in office.

Not to worry.

“Particularly in a general election against Obama, age might not be as big of a disaster for McCain,” he said, “because he can turn a talk about age into a talk about experience.”

But, I countered, the experience argument didn’t work for Clinton against Obama.

“That might not translate to the general election,” Schnur said. “American voters are definitely looking for change, but they are also looking for reassurance.”

McCain is an enthusiastic and faithful supporter of the Iraq war. Even with his March 26 speech on foreign policy, are voters really going to believe that he’s not four more years of the same?

“There was no shortage of change in that message,” Schnur contended. “If you couple that with positions on torture, on global warming, I think you have a much more popular agenda on foreign policy.”

There you have it.

Is McCain as bad as Bush? No. But I have no doubt that he is four more years of this administration’s most failed policies – more war, a worsening economy, ineffective attitude toward the health-insurance crisis…the list of a typical Republican agenda goes on.

But because McCain has adopted an atypical persona despite his typical surface, he has empowered himself to be whatever he wants to be to voters – and, unlike the hated Mrs. Clinton, he’s moderate enough to attract those ever-important independents.

McCain’s strength will depend on how he can control the conversation. Can he put into context his 100-years-in-Iraq comment? Can he define victory there? Can he turn a discussion about age into an effective examination of experience?

Will he attract his party’s base and woo enough independents to put him in the White House?

I suppose it all depends on how successful McCain and his cohorts from the Grand Old Party are in manipulating this country into four more years.