Imagine if, the day after the 2000 election, the national media simply didn't care about what happened in Florida, and instead acted as though Al Gore had won the election because he won the popular vote. Imagine if all cries from the Bush campaign about something called "The Electoral College" fell on deaf ears, and everyone just acted like Gore won and the popular vote was the only thing that mattered. States? Who cares about the results of individual states? Only the popular vote matters, dummies!
While that would have been perfectly fine with me, since I think the Electoral College is an anti-democratic institution that favors the will of geographic areas over the will of American citizens, it isn't what happened. The reason it isn't what happened is that everyone knows Presidency in America is determined by electoral votes, not popular votes. As such, electoral votes, not popular votes, are the main focus during any Presidential general election.
However, today the media decided that the Electoral College doesn't matter, and because Al Gore won the popular vote he won the election. Or, more accurately, the media decided that because more delegates to the Nevada state Democratic Party convention in April indicated they would support Clinton than Obama, it doesn't matter that the way the state delegates are arranged by geography actually projects to Barack Obama sending more pledged delegates from Nevada to the Democratic National Convention. Just as the Constitution indicates that the Electoral College, not the popular vote, determines the winner of the Presidency, Democratic Party by-laws make it quite clear that delegates to the national convention, not the popular vote and not delegates to the state convention, determine the winner of the presidential nomination campaign. Strangely, however, even though Obama is projected to win the most delegates to the national convention, Clinton is projected as the winner.
I've learned two things today. First, the Democratic presidential nomination system is not particularly democratic, since the system of delegate selection is different than the concept of one person one vote. Second, I have learned that the national media is not actually covering the Democratic presidential nomination campaign. If the media was covering the Democratic presidential nomination campaign, then they would have projected Barack Obama as the winner of the Nevada caucuses, projected New Hampshire as a tie between Clinton and Obama, and declared that Clinton finished second in Iowa. That is, after all, what actually happened in the Democratic presidential nomination campaign, which is based on delegates, not popular votes from states. Instead of covering the Democratic presidential nomination campaign, the media is instead covering who wins the popular vote of individual states. While what the media is covering is interesting and closer to the concept of one person, one vote, it isn't the Democratic presidential nomination campaign.
Until the national media declares that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election because he won the popular vote, I will continue to assert that Barack Obama won the Democratic caucuses in Nevada. To agree with one statement without agreeing to both statements is to be caught in a logical contradiction. If delegates to the national convention don't determine who won a state in a nomination campaign, then the Electoral College doesn't determine who wins the Presidency in a general election. We all know, of course, that both of those propositions are false.
If there is a Nevada that Obama lost today, it is a Nevada that exists in a reality outside the presidential nomination rules of the Democratic Party.
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