With the Wyoming Democratic caucus on the horizon, I think it's time we take a look at one of the media's favorite, and frequent, assertions regarding how "Obama does well with winning caucuses, while Clinton does well with winning primaries". Now, we can hardly hold the media completely responsible, as campaign hacks deserve a large share of the credit for this assertion. As always, there remains one simple problem with assertions such as these...those pesky facts!Here is the breakdown, to date, of the Democratic primary and caucus wins for each candidate:
- CAUCUSES Won by Obama: Iowa, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Hawaii.
- TOTAL Obama Caucus Wins - 11
- CAUCUSES Won by Clinton: Nevada.
- TOTAL Clinton Caucus Wins - 1
- PRIMARIES Won by Obama: South Carolina, Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Utah, Louisiana, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Vermont.
- TOTAL Obama Primary Wins - 14
- PRIMARIES Won by Clinton: New Hampshire, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas.
- TOTAL Clinton Primary Wins - 13
And, in the interest of exploring ALL of those pesky facts (yet another difficult step in the pursuit of that elusive 'truth' everyone is always whispering about), we can consider throwing the somewhat illegitimate primary contests of Michigan and Florida into the mix. This would boost Clinton's primary wins by two, thus making the primary wins Obama-14/Clinton-15 (in other words, the same basic standing). Of course, I haven't included the U.S. Virgin Islands caucus win for Obama, as well as what is now more certainly expected to be a Texas caucus win for Obama), mostly because boosting Obama's caucus wins from 11 to 13 over Clinton's 1 caucus win really doesn't add much to an already lopsided equation.
So there you have it, all of those pesky facts laying out there for you. Enjoy them while they last...and by "while they last" I mean until the next dimwit dressed in a suit asserts some kind of fact-deprived assessment pertaining to either Obama or Clinton (or to the greater Democratic Party, for that matter), and to the detriment of intelligent political discourse.
4 comments:
Does the Texas primary/caucus in and of itself not prove the point that the ability to win primaries and caucuses are very different skills, and that one candidate has an advantage in one and another in the other? The primaries you cite are very misleading in that they totally remove context -- Clinton (stupidly) didn't compete in almost any of those, and the ones she did win are much larger than those that Obama won.
And please ignore what time this comment was posted ...
The Texas primary/caucus does seem to prove that Obama does well with caucuses (as well as today's Wyoming caucus), and it also works to prove my other point, which is they both do relatively well with primaries...
First, to say "Clinton didn't compete in almost any of those" primaries Obama won is pretty far from the truth. She strongly competed in every pre-Super Tuesday primary, during the Super Tuesday contests they obviously chose certain states to focus on but were both equally running nation-wide campaigns, and in the post-Super Tuesday primaries there was Maryland, D.C., Virginia, and Wisconsin, all of which she competed (made several speeches, ran ads, had surrogates there, etc.). And, even if the claim that that she wasn't competing in many of the primaries was true, that only furthers the argument that Obama is good in primaries because that means he was strong enough in those state primaries to prevent her from wanting to compete (but, as I said, it really isn't true she hasn't competed in all the primaries).
Second, to say the ones she won are "much larger" than Obama's is also a very shaky statement. If by larger you mean bigger in population and more important electorally, there's no doubt that winning California, New York and New Jersey fall into that category for Clinton, but there are also examples of Missouri, Illinois, and Virginia for Obama. More importantly, when you look at what can be called non-large primary states, Obama's margin of victory is somewhere between 20-30% over Clinton, whereas in the "larger" primary states, where one can say that Clinton has won more than Obama (but, again, not argue that she is the ONLY one winning them), her margin of victory is somewhere in the single digits. Not to mention, these state primary races are already inflated for some states being "larger" than others...it's called the delegate system, with larger states having a bigger delegate position, so to come on top of that political factor and claim an even greater significance for a state that is already inflated in electoral significance is a bit impractical.
And all of this is precisely why Obama is leading in the delegate count right now: for caucuses, Obama is winning almost every one of them by solid margins...for non-large state primaries, Obama is winning slightly more of them than Clinton, and doing so with solid margins...for "larger" state primaries, Obama has a few and Clinton has more, but the margins are mostly single digits (just like in the Texas primary this week), so that even though they are bigger delegate states, Obama is able to keep pace with Clinton here, as well.
Again, I think all of this demonstrates that to claim that Obama is good with caucuses while Clinton is good with primaries (implying that Obama is NOT good with primaries) really doesn't match up with the observable results of the past forty-something contests. I think the media has, once again, attempted to frame things as neatly (read: simplified for low-level comprehension) as possible, and in doing so with their false dichotomy is making it appear as though Obama is weak in primary contests.
And that is precisely all the context I can even think of offering! lol
I think we're having a semantic argument, and I think you're putting words in the mouth of the media. I don't think I've heard anyone say Obama is weak in primaries, just that Clinton has been stronger. I think that's observably true, not based on the delegate counts -- I'll concede that the proportional system makes many of these a wash -- but just in winning the larger ones.
Of the primaries Obama won, Clinton didn't really compete in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana or Vermont, and got a very late start in Wisconsin -- and I'm not really sure if she bothered in Delaware or Utah, but I left them off because I wasn't sure. This has proven to be a foolish strategy, but I don't think it had much to do with Obama simply being stronger in primaries -- most of them were either too small to bother (again, foolish), demographically inhospitable or, in the case of Illinois, Obama's home state. He won big in these states, but these were states tailor-made for Obama for a number of reasons.
In the larger states that she actually won, she won by less, but the reality is that she won them. I'll agree that Obama isn't weak in primaries, but I'll assert that Clinton has been stronger in the two that both have competed in on equal footing. I'm aware that this doesn't necessarily impact political reality -- all delegates count -- but I still think the assertion is accurate.
Well, I think there are still some contextual problems with claiming that Clinton didn't campaign in some of the states you listed. First, you must have accidentally put South Carolina in that list because with the several days of speeches made by Bill Clinton, and with Hillary Clinton showing up the day before and into the day of the primary, I don't see how you can consider her not campaigning there; sure, she saw the writing on the wall and spent a lot of the week in other upcoming states, but the Clinton campaign was very much present in South Carolina. For Illinois, the same can be said for Obama not being present in Arkansas. And as far as Alabama, Georgia, Delaware, and Utah are concerned, these were all Super Tuesday contests, and, like I said, Clinton hardly campaigning in these states had to do with the practicality of campaigning in 20+ contests nationwide, and thus is exactly the same reason Obama didn't campaign in many of the primary contests on Super Tuesday as well; the fact that both candidates had to selectively focus on certain states for Super Tuesday, and thus selectively not campaign in certain primaries, doesn't mean that you can put those states in a 'didn't campaign' category for Clinton and not do so with other Super Tuesday states for Obama. In other words, both for the home state Illinois example and the Super Tuesday skipped primaries examples that you make, the exact same examples can be made for Obama. Now, Clinton didn't really ever compete in Vermont, so I can agree on that one (lol). But, the point remains that to use any broad sense of an argument to claim that there were numerous primaries that Clinton didn't compete in for reasons that were not duplicated or explained by factors similarly affecting Obama just doesn't hold up. The same, however, cannot be said for some of those post-Super Tuesday caucus contests (like Nebraska and Hawaii), in which there are indeed several examples of the Clinton campaign barely allocating much time and effort.
All that said, I do think you're right that it's fair to say that on the whole Clinton has done better in primaries than Obama. And as far as hearing the media say what we've been talking about, there are a few select times I've heard media figures making the case that Obama has yet to prove himself with the primary contest format, but I think my focus was more on when they say that dichotomy of "Obama strong in caucuses while Clinton strong in primaries" and it leaves the implied impression that he hasn't performed well in primary contests (it also leaves the impression that Clinton hasn't performed well in caucuses, but that implication is pretty much backed up with the elections thus far).
And can some news organization please hire us to do a point-counterpoint segment on their station, because I think we can be the Ebert and Roeper of politics! haha
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