336 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyCALIFORNIA AND MASSACHUSETTS VULNERABLE TO GOP WITH OBAMA?
As the primaries rolled on, it became painfully obvious that even traditional Democratic states
could easily fall to the Republicans if Obama were in fact the candidate. The shocking list of states
where this condition obtained included such bulwarks as California, and such swing states as
Florida. Even Massachusetts, one of the most reliable Democratic of all the states, turned into a
battleground in case of an Obama nomination, presumably due to widespread voter disaffection
with the failed governor Deval Patrick, who notoriously spouted the same messianic-utopian
rhetoric which was Obama’s stock in trade. Massachusetts voters were saying in effect that one
Trilateral stooge in a generation was all that they could stomach. The veteran electoral analyst
Michael Barone summed up Obama’s plight in a commentary issued at the end of April: “...Clinton
seems to run stronger than Obama in the industrial (or formerly industrial) belt, running west from
New Jersey through Pennsylvania and Ohio to Michigan and Missouri. Obama’s weakness among
white working-class voters in the primaries here suggests he is poorly positioned to win votes he
will need to carry these states in November. This is not a minor problem — we’re talking about 84
electoral votes. Obama has also fared poorly among Latino and Jewish voters in every primary held
so far. This is of consequence most notably in Florida, which has 27 electoral votes. In 2000, Al
Gore won 67 percent of the vote in Broward County and 62 percent in Palm Beach County — both
have large Jewish populations. In this year’s Florida primary, Obama lost those counties to Clinton
by 57 percent to 33 percent and 61 percent to 27 percent. No Democrat can carry Florida without
big margins in Broward and Palm Beach. Obama’s weakness among Latinos and Jews could
conceivably put California’s 55 electoral votes in play. Los Angeles County delivered an 831,000
vote plurality for John Kerry in 2004. Most of that plurality came from areas with large numbers of
Latinos and Jews.... And his discomfort, evident in the Pennsylvania debate, when he is greeted
with anything but adulation does not augur well for his ability to stand firm and show a sense of
command in the face of the stringent criticism he is bound to receive as the Democratic nominee.
(Michael Barone, “Popular Vote Gives Clinton an Edge,” realclearpolitics.com, April 26, 2008)
THE RUBE GOLDBERG-BYZANTINE NIGHTMARE OF THE MCGOVERN-
FRASER-DUKAKIS-JACKSON RULES
To understand the rules of the Democratic Party for choosing delegates, you need to imagine the
cartoonist Rube Goldberg transported into the flowing robes of a Byzantine Emperor of the tenth
century. It would take such a strange hybrid to come up with the present procedures for delegate
selection, which have become one of the main reasons why the Democratic candidate almost always
loses. Governor Ed Rendell told the discredited Chris Matthews on April 22 that the Democratic
Party delegate rules were “screwed up,” and that a straight tabulation of the popular vote would be
the most democratic criterion for winning. What then were these delegate selection rules upon
which Obama was relying as he sought to game the system? According to one attempted
explanation, “For its first 150 years, the Democratic Party selected its presidential nominee in a
proverbial smoke-filled room, with delegates picked by party bosses. The system began to change
in the 1940s and 1950s, when a handful of states including New Hampshire established primaries to
give voters a say in the selection of delegates.” As a result of the 1968 defeat, a reform commission
was set up under the leadership of George McGovern and UAW leader Douglas Fraser. In 1968,
Vice President Hubert Humphrey had won the Democratic nomination over the elitist antiwar
candidate Eugene McCarthy without winning any primaries. The next year, party leaders named
Senator George McGovern of South Dakota to head a panel to overhaul the delegate selection
process. The McGovern reforms, by abolishing the tradition of giving party leaders seats at the