General Election Polls Suck and Here's Why

One of the things I don't think the media folks have articulated properly is the ramifications of Hillary wrestling the nomination away from Obama.

From my vantage point, Obama has the "cleanest" path to the nomination. He is leading in the most important yardstick for voters to understand, the pledged delegate count. This is how the system is set up. His argument for the nomination is easy to understand and extremely logical for the regular voter to figure out. Hillary is attempting to cloud the picture with her talk of the "popular vote". For her it brings back memories of 2000, which still makes dems like me wince. I totally understand why she is trying to make this new argument on a theoretical level, but it is clear that the pledged delegate lead is the cleanest argument by far. That is why his argument never changes, and hers does with each primary vote.

So, by this measure, the nomination clearly is Obama's to lose. He will absolutely end the primary season with the most pledged delegates and therefore, his claim to the nomination will make sense to voters sense of fair play. He won by the yardstick that was in place at he beginning of the process. It will make sense to the average voter.

So when I see Hillary trotting out polls showing that she does better in certain states (Ohio, PA) than Obama, what the press never seems to mention is that her path to the nomination is much more difficult and fraught with peril for the Democratic Party. Any scenario that gives her the nomination (other than discovering photos of Obama with a naked teenage boy) will without question involve undermining the expressed will of the voters of the primary season. Her path is the one that will create the riots on the streets of Denver. His path does not.

So assume for a moment that she manages to snatch the nomination from Obama under these circumstances. It will essentially destroy the Democratic Party. Black voters (one of the bases of the party), young voters (also known as the future of the party), and very possibly the "upscale educated" voters (that would be us) will leave the party in droves. No Democrat can get elected without these groups.

No polling with her numbers in a general takes into account her destructive path to the nomination. That is one of the huge flaws of her campaign right now. She trots out her arguments of "electability" but the linchpin of her path involves undermining the expressed will of voters. No polling asks these questions. And therefore these polls mean less than nothing until they factor in her only path to become the nominee.