Newsweek's Alter Hypocritical on the Popular Vote

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The popular vote should supercede statewide results for the presidential election in November, but Hillary Clinton's popular vote argument for why she should win the Democratic nomination is specious. Both points of view have been held forth by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

In "Popular Vote Poison: How Hillary's latest math hurts the party," Jonathan Alter cranks up the "Wrap it Up!" box on the New York senator's presidential aspirations.:

Everyone can agree that the primary calendar needs reform. But popular-vote pandering is poison for Democrats. For a party scarred by the experience of 2000, when Al Gore received 500,000 more popular votes than George W. Bush but lost the presidency, this argument is sure to make it harder to unite and put bitter feelings aside.

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The shorthand many Clinton supporters are already taking into the summer is that she won the popular vote but had the nomination "taken away" (as Joy Behar said on "The View") by a man.

What a helpful message for uniting the Democratic Party.

If the Obama people have any sense, they will demand in their negotiations with the Clintonites that Hillary cease and desist in her specious claim to have won the most popular votes.

Given that more than 35 million voters took part in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, the math games on both sides look awfully silly. Everyone should agree to call it a tie.

Yet just last August, Alter panned efforts (mostly Democratic) legislators in North Carolina and (mostly Republican) ballot initiative activists in California to make their respective states award Electoral College electors on the basis of the candidate who wins the individual congressional districts. Such plans would turn the Tarheel and Golden States into a mix of red and blue districts rather than awarding all electors to one party in one fell swoop. Simply put, the plans would make North Carolina less safe for Republicans and California less certain for Democrats in presidential contests.

Alter panned that idea but suggested an alternative that would force states to award all their electors on the basis of who wins the national popular vote:

Is there a better way to make every vote count? Yes, and it doesn't require a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College. All it would take is some good mischief in state legislatures. In February, a bipartisan coalition of former senators led by Birch Bayh, Jake Garn and Dave Durenberger unveiled a campaign for a national popular vote. Under the plan, state legislatures would pass bills that pledged to award their state's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. It's not clear which party this would help, but if adopted by as few as 11 states, it would guarantee that the candidate with the most votes actually won the election. Anybody got a problem with that?

So let's review. When Democrats are picking their nominee, the winner should be whomever can scrape up a majority of delegates, regardless of the popular vote tally. In one sense, of course, these delegates are the primary election analog to the general election's Electoral College members.

Yet in the actual presidential contest, if Alter had his druthers,every state would have to select electors based on the national popular vote winner, regardless of how unpopular that winner might be in the individual state.

The bottom line is that Alter's logic is at best inconsistent and at worst hypocritical. But what's a little of either when your aim is not coherence but cheerleading a Democratic victory in the fall?