Should Barack Obama win the Democratic nomination, he has a patron that he should thank. Jesse Jackson was the first, and last, credible African American candidate for president. Like Obama, he's from Chicago. And like Obama, he's had some run-ins with the Clintons. Despite the commonalities, it's not likely that you will see the two together anytime soon. Obama's too politically adept to be cavorting with the likes of Jackson as he's seeking the presidency (Should he win, he'll let his kooks out by inauguration day). Jackson's candidacy was about race. Obama's candidacy is about transcending race. That difference is what makes Obama legitimate and Jackson--really the first of the unelected celebrity candidates--an also ran.
One of Jackson's crusades after he lost consecutive Democratic nominations to Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis was to make the Democratic Party more, well, democratic. Just as the post-1968 Democrats shifted power from party bosses to primary voters, the post-1988 Democrats shifted power from majorities to proportionalities. The winner-take-all (or almost all) primaries punished candidates such as Jackson, who could perform respectably from state to state, but could never actually win a primary. He was being cheated out of delegates, the argument went, and voters were being cheated out of delegate representation. Jackson's positions carried the day, and the Democrats generally adopted primary formulas that allocated delegates in proportion to the election day vote.
How does that work in practice? Well, last night in Texas, John McCain got 51 percent of the vote--the exact percentage won by Hillary Clinton. "Just win, baby" does not apply here. Whereas McCain earned 121 delegates to sixteen for his nearest competitor Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton earned 65 delegates to Obama's 61. Factor in the Texas caucus, which Obama likely won, and Hillary's victory seems not so much a victory after all. Delegates matter, and Hillary may not leave Texas with more of the Lone Star state's delegates than Obama. That's crazy, but crazy's how the Democrats operate.
Even if Hillary Clinton has stolen Barack Obama's momentum, it will be an uphill fight for her to wrest the nomination from him, too. This is because the proportional allocation of delegates in Democratic primaries makes primary and caucus season less of a state-by-state battle and more of a long-haul contest. By always remaining competitive, overperforming in caucuses, and putting together an impressive winning streak, Senator Obama has made it difficult for Senator Clinton to catch up. It's possible, particularly if Florida and Michigan--Clinton has done so well in larger states--are allowed to revote. But the odds are not in Hillary's favor. This is because Jesse Jackson, back in 1988 with an agreement with the Dukakoids, changed the rules. If Obama and Clinton were battling for delegates under Republican rules, it is almost certain that Clinton would be ahead.
Fighting for votes and not for states in the primaries is probably a bad idea. Politicos don't like it because it drags out the process and denies a party a united front. I don't like it because it presents a distorted picture of how the presidential electoral process works. I realize a good many Democrats simply are applying to themselves the rules they wished governed American politics. But the fact is that the Electoral College doesn't allocate votes by percentages. Come November, the candidates will be vying for electoral votes that are almost always tied to states. Should Obama lose Texas by a few percentage points in November as he did last night, he will get none--not roughly half--of the state's votes. In other words, the way Democrats--actually many independents and Republicans are involved, but that's a complaint for another day--select their presidential nominee is dissimilar to the way America selects its president. Could this be a reason why they've had such a hard time electing presidents the last forty years?
And you might remember Jackson's famous "I have a scheme" speech.
