When The Math Turns Against Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Turns Against Math

Of Clinton winning?  No scenarios where she pulls it out?  Think Red Sox 2004 ALS against the Yankees.  No way I'm predicting what's going to happen here.  The Terry Math is only for the Superdelegates.  And it's not that far from 2+2=4 in Superdelegate land.

This election is so exciting they could sell tickets to every US citizen and pay off the national debt.

Clintonites are also saying that, supposely per Obama, Indiana will be the tie-breaker.  Never mind that Obama is ahead by 130+ delegates and 500,000 pop vote (unless you defy the rules of 3rd grade math).  In Clintonistan, that qualifies as a "tie".  I think she's going to end up stalking the winner of this election.

Not just Tery MC./ Real Clear politics also shows that if you count Florida and Michigan, Hillary has a 122,000 vote lead in the popular vote. Again, Obama people, why the rush to settle what is about as even a race as you can get. Plus, why can't Obama close the deal? Does it trouble you that the UNITER can not even unite his own party? Now, in honesty, I dislike all three McCain, Hill and Obama. Tie breaker for spouses, I like Cindy McCain so there is that. Yet, it seems that all three are extremely WEAK candidates and the real race is as open as it can be. I just do not get the acrobatics for Obama, it is obvious that he cannot win without the Supers, which is exactly Hillary's problem and exactly how the Dems designed their party. I see no reason for Hillary to leave, Obama cannot clinch and she has not done poorly enough to make it a must to leave.

No, that operation only works by assigning Obama 0 (zero) votes in Michigan, and throwing out the results of four caucuses and the non-binding Washington primary (which included many voters who didn't caucus). Feel free to keep arguing that 2+2=5 if you insist. 

As numerous writers have speculated, H. Clinton has no reason to bow out of the race. If she prevails, she's the Dem nominee. If she doesn't, she will have weakened Obama sufficiently to make McCain's victory more likely. McCain will be a one-term president, Obama will vanish from viability per Gore and Kerry, and H will graciously allow the electorate to repent its mistakes and elect her to her rightful spot in the Oval Office.

Lest this sound too conspiracy-soaked, recall that B Clinton pulled just these sorts of disloyal hijinks during his reign. Many Dem congressional candidates were furious that B withheld DLC money from their races, figuring that too many left-leaning Dems in Congress did not serve his triangulating purposes well.

I don't think either of the Clintons could tell scruples from soybeans.   

You can keep insisting that only you are right, but it is true that Obama did not get votes in Michigan, has sought to block a re-vote and can only win through denying two states a place at the table. Obama has not accomplished a thing. He sits in the same seat as Hillary, only maybe with a better view. I ask again, why can he not defeat Hillary? If he is the Messianic figure many here see him to be, why can he not even get a decisive amount of liberals to award himself the nomination? I ask again, do you see this inability to actually win his primary as something to worry about in a general election? Do the Democrats not look idiotic in devising a Rube Goldberg scheme as a way to pick a nominee? Let us say your numbers are the only way to look at things, Obama still cannot clinch without the superdelegates...

With your better than most grasp of history I'm sure you know, the current Democratic delegate system was created as a response to the 1968 Chicago convention fiasco that put in place a nominee that didn't run in ANY primaries. You may have read, the senator from New York and candidate for change (and presumptive nominee) was murdered that year. It hasn't been an issue until the Republican led legislature of Florida combined with Michigan (whats their excuse?) decided they don't need no stinking rules.

Contrast this operation with say the Republican caucus system in Florida or Texas (youtube Ron Paul and see Romney delegates voting 50 times legally) and you have a much more Democratic, if you will, system.

The cold hard fact is this; neither candidate will have enough votes. There is no way around it.

It's now my turn. In the next eleven days, I have to decide who to vote for and I'm no closer to that than I was at any time since Edwards was bounced. I can only attribute so much name calling such as old racist hicks and xenophobic high school dropouts to the youthful exuberance of new voters but there may be more to this. Could it be that the prospect of actually needing the most overlooked and taken for granted besides blacks (in my vote eligible lifetime,) is a fate worse than death?

"This election is so exciting they could sell tickets to every US citizen and pay off the national debt."

Brilliant idea Naftali, count me in!

Jeffrey, you crack me up!  Setting aside the fact that you will base your vote on the pervy hotness factor of the candidate's spouse, your mathematics defies mathematics.

"Tie breaker for spouses, I like Cindy McCain so there is that." Well said. Thank you.

"I ask again, why can she not defeat Obama? If she is the Messianic figure many here see her to be, why can she not even get a decisive amount of liberals to award herself the nomination? I ask again, do you see this inability to actually win her primary as something to worry about in a general election? Do the Democrats not look idiotic in devising a Rube Goldberg scheme as a way to pick a nominee? Let us say your numbers are the only way to look at things, Hillary still cannot clinch without the superdelegates..."

Weaver, the above are your exact words, I just switched Obama with Hillary.  Do keep in mind that 1 year ago, Hillary and the Democratic party thought that she was a shoe-in for the nomination.  Obama came from nowhere to turn her world upside down.  If she was the Democratic candidate the Democrats have been waiting for all these years, then how did this happen?  How did a guy whom, as you say has done nothing, get this far in the primary process with a decisive lead over the woman who was supposed to sweep the Democratic primaries? 

If she can't beat Obama, who runs a clean campaign except when attacked, how is she going to beat McCain?  Of course, that's exactly what you want.  Why?  Because you're confident that McCain will attack Iran and piss on the Palestinians for another 8 years.  Hillary would probably do the same thing, but given the choice between two war-mongerers, most reasonable folks will have no choice but to vote for the one who is more likely to be the better war-monger.  I mean, if you're a starving vegetarian, and you're forced between eating two pieces of steak, you're not going to choose the dry, cold one are you?  No, you're going to pick the juicy, warm one.  I know, not the best anology since both Hillary and McCain are dry and cold.  Anyway, you get the point.

2+2 might equal 5.  I wish there were a mathematical sign for 'might equal'.  And I wish there were a mathematical sign for 'backscratching' with the emphasis on 'scratch'.  Can you imagine the number of books that will be written generally titled "The Real Truth About the 2008 Presidential Election".  Still won't save the publishing industry, though.

Naftali, you're confusing use and mention. In some (infinitely many) possible languages, the sentence "2+2 = 5" is true, but in such languages, "2+2=5" doesn't express the proposition that 2+2=5.

Jeffrey, this is simple. If the expressed will of each participant in the primaries/caucuses counts as a popular vote, Obama has more votes. If only expressed preferences that accord with some rationally consistent set of rules count, Obama has more votes. Under the current governing rules, Obama has more votes.

However, as I said, there are uncountably infinitely many possible manipulations of primary and caucus results that give Clinton the lead (same for Edwards, Kucinich, Gravel, me, you), none of which are informative.

"Why can't he beat Hillary?" It's an odd question, he has beaten Hillary. If a football team is ahead by an insurmountable lead and can't force a turnover in garbage time, that doesn't mean the outcome is in any question.

this is back room cigar smoking politics.  And Terry M just exhaled a little bit.  This isn't about math, it's not about reason, it's about who can get up and walk out of the room. 

Daniel,

I'm pretty sure there are not "uncountably
infinitely many possible manipulations of primary and caucus results
that give Clinton the lead". I'd imagine there can't be an infinite number of votes for any voter, and that there can, at best, be a countably infinite number of voters in our universe, though I think it safe to think the number is finite and thus countable. Assuming that each voter gets their own unique identifying number, then votes can only be attributed into finite subsets of a finite set (which, if it has n elements, would have 2^n possible subsets). Thus, there is not only not an uncountably infinite number of ways the votes can be apportioned, but only a finite one.

 Now, you seem to be willing to consider that an infinite number of people can have votes attributed to them, which would allow for a countably infinite number of manipulations. But, considering the fact that there is only a finite number of people living at the time of any one vote, then there is still only a finite number of manipulations possible.

 You might be thinking about that those "infinitely many possible languages", and then that their existence might entail that there are uncountably infinitely many ways to make "Hillary has the lead" true, but that would not mean that there are uncountably many ways that Hillary has the lead, for the very use/mention sorts of distinctions that you referenced.

 (Tongue firmly in cheek here. Not trying to piss you off. Just looking for a little more careful respect of the magnitude of the uncountably infinite.)

Then he has clinched? You cannot defeat Hillary. Obama has won nothing. He needs the Supers as much as she does. The funny thing is, I still do not understand the love of Obama. I now get Phantom's love. He seems to worship peace regardless of the immorality of inaction. That is sad and we will never agree.

to repeat, Obama has not won. He can only win if Hillary quits the game. I am not a Dem, but one thing Hill understands - the Democrat party NEVER abides by the rules. Look at the Torch being replaced long after the time was passed by Frank Lautenburg. Watch Dems sue to keep open only Urban voting centers in statewide races. Plenty more examples out there, Hill knows this and that is what keeps her going.  

Weaver, if that's what you think about my world view, then you haven't been reading my posts.  I don't care if you read my posts, but I don't appreciate being either maliciously or negligently mischaracterized.

Anon@3:56: No, I appreciate it. I used the term "possible manipulations" deliberately. Sure, it's true that there are finitely many voters, but the Clinton campaign is too clever to let that stand as an obstacle. Take their argument that results in some states matter more than others. That point can be mathematically precisified and factored into a manipulation of the results. Say, instead of giving each voter a weight of exactly one vote, we assigned each voter a real value in the unit interval determined by a function with a given n-tuple (e.g., <relative degree of home state's matteringness, relative degree of white-working-classness>) as its input. Then we take the sum of output values for each candidate's voters and see who's ahead.

Just look at the first member of the ordered pair. Say each state is ranked from 1-50 in order of matteringness. Now assign them values in the unit interval representing degree of matteringness that respects that ranking. For each Vi, where i is the rank of a state from 1-50 and V is the degree to which it matters, Vi > Vi+1 (I'll trust you to read the 'i' and 'i+1' as subscripted). Preserving the order of ranking, there are continuum-many possible assignments of values to V1-V50 --- no end of space in the Hilbert hotel, right? So even though there are finitely many voters, there are continuum many unique possible assignments of weight to each of them. So that gives us uncountably infinitely many vote counts. Uncountably many (say, ones where Clinton states get high rankings and white-working-classness is a big factor on the output values) put Clinton ahead; uncountably many (say, ones where the Obama states get high rankings and white-working-classness is a negligible factor on output values) put Obama ahead.

How do we come up with uncountably infinitely many ways to put Gravel ahead? Let's cook up a function that takes Gravel voters to 1 and all other voters to a real number ≤ one 300 millionth? That way, 1 person voting for Gravel outweighs the entire US population voting for anybody else (assuming the US pop. is a bit less than 300 million). The rest is easy. For every x such that 0 < x ≤ 1/300,000,000, cook up a function that gives Gravel voters a weight of 1 and non-Gravel voters a weight of x.     

But all this is thinking about it way too hard. How many possible counting criteria are there along the lines of "number of states colored yellow on Wikipedia's map"? I'd guess at least alef-1.

"I used the term 'possible manipulations' deliberately."

Don't use a precise mathematical term like "uncountably infinite" when you're talking about ideas and "possible manipulations." It's not technically wrong; it just smacks of academic elitism and doesn't further the discussion.

I can prove anything is uncountably infinite by throwing in a real number variable somewhere.

Come on, David, this is (I hope) clearly tongue-in-cheek stuff. The point being that, since the Clinton campaign is pushing a vote count that's either motivated by a contradiction or else unmotivated, doing ridiculous things like arbitrarily introducing real number variables makes no less sense than their math does, and gets you uncountably many inconsistent results.

Instead of this whole post, I could have written:

∀p (⊥⊃ p) where p is a variable ranging over propositions

But that would have been a less effective way of making the point.

You have the audacity to complain that I misconstrue your arguments, when that is exactly what you have done to me in the earlier post. You stated quite clearly that you support Obama because of his dovish fetish, what am I to surmise then other than that you also share that same view. So when you are doing this to others, I thought you would not mind having it done to yourself...

 Again - Obama is sitting in the exact same situation as Obama, he cannot clinch but must look to the superdelegates to win, same as Hillary. He may or may not have a lead in this or that column, yet he does not have what it takes to win. This is the same as those that are in the lead in an election yet have to go to a runoff,but end up losing in the final tally. There is nothing wrong in that, it is life and the system. 

Granted, I was a little harsh.

However, if ∀d(d∈℘(j)), where d is one of your Jewcy posts, and j is the set of academic, tongue-in-cheek references, we can only hope that ∀d(d⊆j). God help us if ∃d(d=j). I just don't have that kind of time.

(Of course, ∀d(d∈℘(j)) is needlessly verbose, but I just had to throw in a Weierstrass somewhere.)

Craig: See the pain you've brought on Jewcy readers by supporting UTF-8?

David, you're ok with all my posts being some academic tongue-in-cheek reference so long as I don't write a post that is all of them? I can live with that --- if you tell me how to add all the symbols I don't have and need to the standard mac character palette.

You'll find it all (from ℵ to ℤ) scattered between "Mathematical Symbols" and "Letterlike Symbols." You may need "Technical Symbols" if you're doing really serious mathematical typesetting, but that's what LaTeX is for.