On the surface, the race for a presidential nomination seems relatively straightforward: candidates compete in a series of primaries and caucuses, hoping to earn pledged delegates to their party’s national convention. Get enough delegates and you’re the nominee.
But just below the surface, things get a little complicated. Especially for candidates who are likely to come up short, there are often spirited attempts to suggest the only metric that matters isn’t the only metric that matters. In recent months, for example, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has put forward a variety of arguments intended to shift the focus away from the fight for pledged delegates: maybe blue-state contests matter more; perhaps Southern victories “distort reality”; maybe successes in closed primaries are less impressive, and so on.
Yesterday, Sanders’ top campaign strategist, Tad Devine, came up with a brand new one. The Huffington Post reported:
“Let’s suppose that in the next six weeks, Bernie Sanders goes on a tear like he has gone on before. And let’s suppose in the 10 states and the four other contests that are out there, he wins the vast majority of them – he wins California by a huge margin, he racks up an impressive set of victories,” said Devine. “Should we then say the only benchmark is who has got more pledged delegates? Shouldn’t those superdelegates take into consideration a totality of the circumstances?”
Asked if he believed that later contests were more important than earlier ones, Devine didn’t flinch. “I think they are,” he said,
I’ve seen some Sanders critics already suggest, in response to Devine’s comments, the idea of later victories mattering more than early victories is absurd. And while I can appreciate the point, history offers an interesting counter-example.
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