Did the Limbaugh Effect Also Flip Michigan?
By Paul Rogat Loeb
Created May 13 2008 - 8:50am
With Hillary Clinton rejecting [1] the compromise that Michigan Democratic
leaders just crafted, the Democratic Rules Committee has a dilemma.
Clinton
keeps demanding that Michigan's delegates be ap****tioned according to the
January 15 vote, where she was the sole major candidate on the Democratic
ballot. But there's another twist that no one has raised--the impact of a
Rush Limbaugh-style crossover on the Michigan vote. Limbaugh's "Operation
Chaos" quite likely gave Clinton [2] Indiana, provided much [3] of her
4-point Texas margin, buttressed [4] her Ohio win, and decreased [5]
Obama's
margin in Mississippi. But no one talks about the impact of crossovers on
Clinton's self-proclaimed Michigan victory, without which her unopposed
candidacy would still have gotten less than 50 percent.
Of course the entire Michigan vote was a charade. Former Michigan Senator
Donald Riegle compared [6] it to Soviet elections: "a sham" she, Bill, and
her sup****ters "rigged to give the nation the impression that she's the
leading candidate in Michigan." In an October 2007 New Hamp****re Public
Radio interview that every delegate should hear [7], Clinton justified her
staying on the Michigan ballot by explaining, "this election they're
having
is not going to count for anything." As Michigan Public Radio commentator
Jack Lessenberry pointed out [8], fewer than 600,000 voted in the state's
Democratic primary, compared to 867,000 Republican votes (and 2.5 million
votes for John Kerry in 2004). So Michigan and Florida are among just a
handful of states where Republican turnout exceeded that of the Democrats
in
this year's primaries. The vast bulk of Michigan Democrats stayed home,
with
way fewer voting than in far smaller states [9].
All this so profoundly taints the Michigan primary result that the only
reasonable solution is to split the state's delegates down the middle. But
another factor makes the taint still worse--the 60,000 Democrats who
crossed
over to vote Republican, based on their 7 percent [10] share of the
Republican vote. (In comparison, in South Carolina's contested primary, 11
days later, just 2% [11] of the Republican voters were Democrats. Add in
the
vote for "uncommitted," and for Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Chris
Dodd
(who'd already dropped out), plus the 27,000 votes that Lori Hansen Riegle
(Senator Riegle's wife), says were discarded [12] because of write-ins,
and
the non-Clinton total climbs to 353,686, or 25,000 more than Hillary's
328,151 [13].
Michigan Democrats who felt the vote was meaningless were in fact
encouraged
to cross over. Since everyone (including Clinton) said the results
wouldn't
count, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsis suggested [14] Michigan
Democrats
vote for Mitt Romney to prolong the Republican race, keep the Republican
candidates at each others' throats, and perhaps help nominate the
presumably
less-electable Mitt Romney. In other words, pretty much what Rush Limbaugh
and his allies ended up doing, except that unlike Indiana and Ohio,
Michigan
had no laws even theoretically prohibiting such an action. No one thought
Clinton would have the chutzpah to retroactively claim a Soviet-style
victory. Other progressive bloggers picked up on the idea as well. I also
heard it discussed on my local Air America affiliate. These strategic
voters, whether inspired by the blogs or self-initiated, combined with
other
Democrats who simply figured McCain was less fundamentalist than Huckabee
and had more substance than Romney's empty-suit puffery, so would still be
a
better choice for America if the Democratic candidate lost. Had all of
them
stayed in the Democratic primary and voted against Hillary, it would have
tipped her to 48 percent.
Kos and his DailyKos [15] site do valuable work, and I suspect Limbaugh
would have launched his campaign without the precedent. But in both cases,
Clinton benefited. As soon as McCain had clinched the nomination, Limbaugh
and allies like Laura Ingraham began encouraging Republicans to further an
increasingly nasty Democratic fight. Obama had been gaining legitimate
sup****t from Republicans simply inspired by his message, sick of Bush, and
therefore open to changing. A conservative Mormon accounting professor me
saying "Paul, you aren't going to believe this. Obama is way too liberal
for
me, but I'm going to vote for him because I think he has integrity."
Post-Limbaugh, those who switched included a substantial number of
Republicans trying to disrupt the Democratic primary. As the Boston Globe
[16] re****ted, "In Ohio and Texas on March 4, Republicans comprised 9
percent of the Democratic primary electorate, more than twice the average
GOP share of the turnout in the earlier contests where exit polling was
conducted. Clinton ran about even with Obama among Republicans in both
states, a far more favorable showing among GOP voters than in the early
races." A Wall Street Journal [17] story found similar results. Twelve
percent of Mississippi's Democratic primary voters were Republicans [18],
breaking three to one for Clinton, but 31% of that group said she wasn't
honest and trustworthy, which hardly suggested they'd be voting for her
come
November. In Indiana, Huffington Post staff re****ter Sam Stein points out
[19] that seven percent of those who voted for Clinton in the primary say
they wouldn't vote for her in November. But without those voters, she
wouldn't have had her two-percentage-point victory.
This resonates with my experience. I've gotten emails from people
throughout
these states who've described coworkers, neighbors, or friends who they
witnessed bragging or laughing about being part of Rush's crossover
legions.
I've read many similar first-person accounts on various blogs. Given the
size of Limbaugh's audience and that of his allies in this effort, it
seems
perfectly conceivable that he ****fted 2-3 percent of the vote in each of
the
states that he targeted. Those jumping on the Daily Kos campaign in
Michigan
had a far smaller megaphone, but operated under similar strategic
assumptions. They were hardly Hillary sup****ters, or they'd have voted for
her, but the numbers suggest their votes made a difference, helping give
her
the "victory" she now clings to.
Clinton's negligible hopes require both massive superdelegate ****fts and
seating both Michigan and Florida according to her fantasy projections,
where Obama gets zero Michigan delegates because he wasn't on the ballot,
and where Obama loses in a Florida vote he never had a chance to contest.
The Rules Committee decision-makers would do well to remember the
conscious
interventions of those who tried to game the primary system. In the case
of
Michigan, they hardly intended to benefit Hillary, but without their
switch,
she wouldn't have been able to make even the hollow claims on which she
now
rests so much of her last-stand campaign.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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