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Guess What? Obama Is Winning Texas

Guess What? Obama Is Winning Texas
By Lisa Pease, www.consortiumnews.com

Editor’s Note: Hillary Clinton prevailed in the Texas primary, beating Barack Obama by a
51-to-48 margin and claiming 65 delegates to his 61. However, Texas has a two-step process
for
apportioning its delegates, meaning that Obama had a chance to reverse Clinton’s
four-delegate
net gain in the caucus phase.

Historian Lisa Pease examines how this curious twist in the march to the Democratic
presidential nomination is turning out:

Tuesday night, as the polls closed, the media proclaimed Barack Obama the winner of
Vermont and
gave all the other state contests of the day -- Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas -- to
Hillary
Clinton.

But there was one big problem. A Texas-sized problem.

The election results from the Lone Star State’s caucuses had only just started coming in.

Texas is the only state in the union that allows people to legally vote twice: once in the
primary, and once in their local caucus, or, as they are called in Texas, “precinct
conventions.”

Roughly two-thirds of the pledged delegates (126) are determined by the outcome of the
primary,
and the remaining delegates (67) are determined by the results of the caucuses.

Only those who have already voted in the primary are allowed to vote in a caucus.

When the media proclaimed Clinton the victor in Texas, the caucus results were simply not
part
of the equation. But now that more than 24 hours have passed, something fascinating is
happening.

Obama appears to be winning Texas.

Delegates, Not Votes

In the Democratic primary, as in the general election, the popular vote does not determine
the
winner. In the nominating process, the contest is for delegates, not votes. (In the
general
election, the winner of a state gets its “electors” who then vote for the president in the
Electoral College.)

If the media were consistent regarding the popular-vote winner as the actual winner, they
would
have given the 2000 presidential election to Al Gore, who defeated George W. Bush by more
than
a half million votes nationwide.

In Texas, Hillary won 65 delegates in the primary. Obama earned 61 delegates.

But in the caucuses, with 48 percent of the caucus results reported as of early Thursday
morning, per the Texas Democratic Party’s Web site, Obama has won approximately 56 percent
of
the caucus votes, leaving Clinton with just under 44 percent.

When you apply these percentages to the 67 delegates, Obama gets 37 delegates from the
caucuses, and Clinton gets 30.

If you add the primary and caucus delegates together, Clinton gets 95 delegates, but Obama
gets
98, a net gain of three.

If current trends hold, Obama will win Texas by earning the overall delegate victory.

This would hardly be a surprise, given that Obama has won 11 out of the 13 caucuses held
so far
and 11 states in a row going into last Tuesday.

Clinton had a big win in Ohio, and a substantial victory in Rhode Island. But imagine the
narrative had the press noted that she appeared to be losing Texas.

Bill Clinton’s words would have echoed throughout the media. He had told an audience in
Texas
in February, “If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don't
deliver
for her, I don't think she can be.”

Democratic Party leaders would likely have called upon Clinton to gracefully accept defeat
for
the good of the party.

Instead, Clinton stood in a shower of confetti and claimed a resounding victory over all
three
states.

Challenging the Caucuses

Offstage, both the Obama and Clinton campaigns accused each other of trying to game the
caucuses.

Tuesday night, Obama’s campaign attorney Bob Bauer jumped in on a conference call between
the
Clinton campaign and reporters to note that the Clinton campaign had a pattern of
challenging
caucuses. Bauer noted that a lawsuit had been threatened in advance of the Nevada caucuses
(although the lawsuit never materialized).

Clinton has made several comments denigrating caucuses in general, noting that people who
work
during the caucus time can’t participate. Different states have different procedures,
however,
that try to make participation easy.

In Texas, for example, once voters signed in and noted the candidate they were supporting,
they
were not required to stay for the entire caucus to have their votes counted.

This also isn’t the first time the press has denied Obama a delegate victory.

In Nevada, the press crowned Clinton the winner, despite the fact that Obama won the
delegate
count.

In New Hampshire, Obama was handed a loss, even though the delegates were equally split
between
Obama and Clinton.

The media’s rush to judgment predates this election, of course. In 2004, despite early
reports
of widespread voter disenfranchisement, Ohio was called for Bush before even a cursory
investigation could be started, let alone completed.

In 2000, the media first announced that Al Gore had won Florida. Then they changed their
boards
and said Florida was too close to call.

Then the election was given to George W. Bush, even though, as Robert Parry reported in
2001, a
recount the following year by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news
organizations, demonstrated that, had all the legally cast votes in Florida been counted,
Gore
would have carried Florida and won the presidential election. [For details, see Neck Deep:
The
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

Why is the media in such a rush to declare a winner?

If we can wait 24 hours to find out who is going home on "American Idol,"
certainly we can wait
much longer to get accurate election data.

And if reporters cannot properly calculate the delegate assignments, shouldn’t they wait
until
the party officials provide the correct count?

Our form of government depends on three principles: adherence to the Constitution as the
highest authority in the land; the informed consent of the governed; and an accurate count
of
the votes cast by the governed. Rushing to judgment in an election is not just careless,
it
threatens the very foundations of our Democracy.

More immediately, the media’s haste is threatening the Democrats’ chances of winning in
November by prolonging an increasingly bitter contest, even though one candidate (Obama)
maintains a nearly unsurpassable lead in delegates.

Lisa Pease is a historian who has studied the JFK assassination and other enduring
political
mysteries.

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