Election Hiccups

Election Hiccups

John L. Perry
Friday, Feb. 20, 2004

Bush soars, Bush sags. Dean surges, Dean refluxes. Kerry surges, Kerry hiccups. Edwards surges …. The election’s almost nine months away, time enough to make babies.

So stop hyperventilating and get a grip. This is only the Democratic Party’s in-house primary season, for crying out loud, not the Nov. 2 election, itself.

But to hear the left-elitist media tell it, each day’s exit poll or speculation survey on George W. Bush versus Name-a-Democrat is the latest early-bird presidential election.

It’s No Accident

Dutifully playing the Democratic National Committee’s game, they are consciously giving the impression Bush has already lost, and it’s just a question of which Democrat will be the next president. After all, that’s where the action is right now.

A little reality checking tells you a lot about what’s actually going on:

There are 50 states and six exotic places, including politically significant Guam and American Samoa, where delegates to the Democratic Party’s 2004 presidential nominating convention are to be chosen during this Democratic primary season, Jan. 19 through June 8.

Five months from now, July 26-27, Democratic delegates will cast 2,161 votes to pick a nominee at their national convention in Boston (you can almost see the signs: “Welcome Home, Our No. 1 Massachusetts Liberal”).

Read that again: Pick a nominee. Not elect a president; that comes more than three months later.

Aug. 30-Sept. 2, more than six months from now, President Bush will be nominated at the Republican National Convention in New York (you can almost see the signs: “No Hillary Need Apply”).

There is no Republican primary-season contest in 2004. This president is unopposed within his party not merely because he’s the incumbent but, moreover, because of his immense popularity across America – despite what the leftist news-media and their favored opinion pollsters would have you believe.

On the first Tuesday in November – that’s almost 37 weeks from now – yet-to-be-determined millions of registered voters of all political stripes will go to the only polls that count and cast their votes.

That’s a few more than the 500 to 1,000 “typical voters” nationwide the pollsters badger by telephone to answer questionable questions that the news media, months in advance of the election, accept without question as substituting for actual votes.

On Nov. 2, the candidate who receives more votes than any other in a given state – even if it is only a plurality, not a simple majority – wins all of that state’s electoral votes.

In this presidential election, there are 538 Electoral College votes. A simple majority – 270 – is needed to elect the president.

Thus, the candidate who receives at least one electoral vote more than half of the combined electoral votes from all 50 states becomes president.

Obviously, a number of things have to happen, over a substantial period of time, between now and then.

At this writing, Kerry has amassed all of 610 delegates pledged to vote for him at the Democratic convention. He’s still 1,551 short of the 2,161 needed to clinch the nomination.

Howard Dean, politically deceased or not, has 202 delegates, about a third as many as Kerry, falling 1,959 short of the goal that only a month or so ago seemed well within his reach. Surge or no surge, John Edwards, at 192 delegates, is still in the running but even farther behind, by 1,969. Go figure.

That picayune combined harvest of delegates is what the Democratic primaries and caucuses in 16 states so far have yielded – at the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars of campaign contributions. (No wonder it’s the economy that’s surging.)

How indicative are those 16 results of how the entire American electorate will vote Nov. 2? Not a whole lot, if you want the truth.

That’s because not all those Democratic Party primaries and caucuses were capital-D Democratic – or small-d, either, if you were to take a close look.

In fact, seven of the 16 were so-called “closed” primaries and caucuses, in which only Democrats were allowed to vote. They were: Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

In the other nine – so-called “open” or “modified open” primaries and caucuses – Independents and, in some instances Republicans, were allowed to vote along with Democrats. The nine were: Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Who’s to say with accuracy which Democratic candidates the non-Democratic voters cast their ballots for in those nine states. Or why? Were they trying to jigger the Democratic nominating process by boosting the Democratic candidate they thought might be the weakest for Bush to face in November?

In an open primary, you must ask for either a Democratic or a Republican ballot and then vote in only that primary. You can’t hop back and forth, voting to nominate, say, a Democrat for president and a Republican for some other office.

How many non-Democrats in those open primaries would have still voted for a Democratic Party candidate if Bush, a Republican, had been on the same ballot?

Somewhat the same conundrum applies to the closed Democratic primaries, where neither Republicans nor Independents were eligible to vote.

Would Democratic voters who voted in the closed primaries have voted instead for Bush if he had been on the ballot? Were they voting merely for the Democrat they thought was the best one on that primary ballot but not really their first choice for president in the November election? Or might they change their minds in the general election and vote for someone else?

In every primary and caucus so far where Kerry won, he received fewer than a majority of the votes cast. Stated another way, more voters throughout the entire Democratic primary season so far said with their votes that they want some candidate other than Kerry.

How big a threat to Bush in November does that make Kerry?

The number of those who didn’t vote in those 16 states may be more meaningful than those who did vote.

Hyped up as this campaign has been, the number voting so far in the Democratic primaries has been far fewer than the number of Democrats who voted in the previous presidential election.

And that’s not even counting Republicans and Independents who voted, now or then.

Here’s how the remaining 40 Democratic primaries and caucuses line up.

Open (22): Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, Democrats Abroad, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands and West Virginia.

Closed (18): Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Counting the 16 primaries and caucuses already held, that’s a total of 31 open and 25 closed. Forty more are yet to come, by which time who knows what might happen.

The states with open Democratic primaries and caucuses have a total of 282 electoral votes. Those with closed Democratic primaries and caucuses have 256.

Primaries and caucuses in those venues are rather shaky ground on which to project the outcome of a presidential election months down the road in which all voters – Democratic, Independent and Republican – get to cast ballots.

What all that adds up to is a day-by-day, primary-by-primary, non-existent, piecemeal election-in-progress. It’s not even a reliable barometer of what’s to come in November.

Yet that’s exactly how the news media, which are determined to determine the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, are playing it – and will continue to play it right up until polls close on Nov. 2.

At that time, look for the television “analysts” suddenly to discover an ersatz Mother of All Surges – “last-minute” changes of voters’ minds that “prove” the pseudo-journalists with their ridiculous opinion polls were right all along … up until the very moment actual votes were being counted.

Hedging Their Bets

That’s why you may expect also a flurry of news-media clichés, like “up for grabs” and “too close to call,” that they love to pull out of their CYA hats as Election Day nears.

So pay no heed to the leftist news-media gobbledegook you’re hearing now that makes this primary season sound as if it’s the election that’s months and months in the future. This is nothing more than a noisy parade of Democratic Party primaries and caucuses – and not very reliable ones at that.

As for opinion polls and news-media thumb-sucking:

While this is being written, a mug of tea sits alongside the keyboard atop a ceramic tile, a souvenir from the gift shop at the Harry S Truman Library in Independence, Mo.

Modest to a Fault

It is a replica of the Nov. 3, 1948, issue of the Chicago Tribune, whose masthead motto was “The World’s Greatest Newspaper.” It reported on the election in which Truman beat the socks off Thomas E. Dewey, to the surprise of almost everyone but Truman.

The embarrassing headline across the top of Page One, in big, black, boxcar capitals reads: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”

The Trib had fallen for its own pseudo-journalism and biased prognostication during the campaign. But that was then.

The thing to do now is take a deep breath, sit back, put the phony experts on mute, decide for yourself the issues that matter, pay attention to the candidates and especially their character, make up your own mind and, when your turn comes, vote your own conscience.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind for you from the beginning of this nation. And what today’s children will be holding you accountable for tomorrow.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

Other Columns by John L. Perry

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