While the Democratic Party does have proportional representation in its nominating process–and good for it!–even better would be ranked-choice voting in a national primary.
The next best thing to being able to mark your transferable ballot as Edwards >> Obama would be to donate via the John Edwards page of the Obama campaign website. This is brilliant.
As for Ladera Frutal, the official work vehicle of the finca has displayed this preference order1 since the day Mr Edwards ended the most social-democratic campaign we are likely to see for some time.
The endorsement speech by Edwards was perfect. Like Obama, Edwards stressed the importance of making the country live up to its claims of greatness, rather than taking that greatness as given.
As for the impact of the endorsement, one can hardly glance at the Gallup daily tracking trend back to January2 without concluding that Edwards already did the most he could for Obama just by the timing of his withdrawal.
_______
The above is not an endorsement. F&V does not endorse candidates, after all.3
________
- And this reminds me that I need to add that IRV sticker Jack was nice enough to send me some weeks ago. And, of course, this is a truncated ranking, showing only preferences 4 and 5 out of the original 8. [↩]
- Planted here previously. [↩]
- Although evidence suggests that Ladera Frutal does. [↩]
Cross-posted at FiveThirtyEight – rather worrying that such astute bloggers don’t seem to quite get the whole “preferences are transitive” thing:
Oh, hold on, now. By the same token, I’m sure McCain or George HW Bush would lose a GOP primary in, say, Utah to Reagan or Goldwater. But this wouldn’t stop McCain or HW from carrying Utah in a general election against a Democrat like Dukakis or Kerry.
If DC is a leftish-liberal electorate, then it will favour the most leftish-liberal candidate [of those on the ballot who have a chance of crossing the threshold, whether a plurality or a percentage]. So – advantage Obama over Hillary, but Hillary over McCain [and McCain over Huckabee!], in Washington DC.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 17 May 2008 @ 06:42