Winner take all?

Matt Lewis does some thinking about how delegates have been apportioned.

As we've witnessed this year, Democrats employ a Byzantine system of delegate apportionment in order to achieve electoral "fairness" (a candidate who wins a lot of votes, yet loses the state should get something out if it, right?).

The fact that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are currently engaged in political hand-to-hand combat which has featured name calling, including allegations of some of the primary players being a, "Monster," "Judas," and even (gasp!) "McCarthy," illustrates the fact that the Democrats' electoral system has hurt – not helped – their chances.

Republicans, by contrast, use a simpler -- daresay "ruthless" -- winner-take-all system which has allowed John McCain to capture the nomination without enduring the kind of protracted battle the Democrats have had to face. (Of course, some could argue that the Republican rules allowed a candidate who was nobody's favorite to rise from the dead with a 3rd place in Iowa and seal up the whole thing in 30 days.)

And though the Republican system for picking a nominee may not seem as "fair," it actually works. And in the long-run, it is actually less painful -- and fairer to the participants -- than the Democrats' system.

What is more, the Republican model may actually prepare candidates for the future challenges they will face. (After all, if you're going to believe in social engineering, why not encourage the behavior that will lead to victory?)

The bottom line is that it is axiomatic that what gets measured gets accomplished. As such, if one goal of primary elections is to help a party select the best-prepared candidate to win a General Election, then the selection rules ought to reward characteristics and behaviors that are likely to lead to victory in the General Election. But as Gov. Rendell's comments imply, the qualities the Democratic Party is doing just the opposite.

This reminds me an excellent book I read a while back called Moneyball. A major premise of the book is that we should measure -- and reward -- the things that ultimate lead us to achieve our goals.

One of the features of the electoral college is that wins and losses tend to be decisive -- far more than the popular vote margins are. The way the EC is structured, we prevent the kind of problem in the national election that the Democrats are seeing in their nomination process.