Popularity Contest

After months of the Clinton campaign's mind-numbing spin about all the different reasons Obama's many many wins don't count -- too many blacks in that state, too many college graduates in that one, that state's too small, that state ends in a vowel -- they've now decided that the real metric of these races is the popular vote.

And, hey, Hillary's found a way to count the popular vote that makes her the leader! First of all, you have to discount the caucus states. That's a dirty communist way to conduct an election, as any New York Senator not pandering for votes in Ames last winter would tell you. Second, you have to count the states that everyone agreed wouldn't count.

Clinton is including Michigan and Florida, primaries she won after all the candidates agreed to boycott the states for holding votes too early for party rules. Obama had his name pulled off the ballot in Michigan, so he doesn't get a single vote from that state.

"I'm very proud that as of today, I have received more votes by the people who have voted than anybody else, and I am proud of that," Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis. "It's a very close race, but if you count, as I count, the 2.3 million people who voted in Michigan and Florida, then we are going to build on that."

What balls. "If you count as I count" might just be this year's version of "It depends on what the definition of 'is' is."

And remember the whole point of this. They're arguing that the popular vote is what matters -- and not, you know, the lame-ass "rules" that say that delegates are what matters -- so that they can convince the superdelegates to overturn the primary results. It's an argument that essentially says "Listen to the will of the people, and then tell them to go fuck themselves."

Brilliant. Looks like it's time for me to make another donation.

Update: The Daily Show just had an excellent segment on all this. Worth a look if you missed it.