Irony

Isn't it a bit ironic that Bill Clinton is going on and on about the the popular vote when he's the first president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to have been re-elected without achieving a popular vote majority in either of his elections?

In 1992, he won 43.01% of the vote. In 1996, he won 49.23%.

In 1912, Wilson won 41.84% of the vote. In 1916, he won 49.24%.

Data from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.

Update on 5/30 at 11:45PM: The point of this post is not to dispute the legitimacy of Bill Clinton's election -- he was the popular vote leader both times.

Moreover, even though a majority of voters chose someone other than Bill Clinton, in both of his elections, they were also both 100% legitimate. Why? Because he followed the rules that everybody had agreed to ahead of time and won large electoral college majorities.

Similarly, Barack Obama has followed all the rules -- he's not the one trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. The Clintons are the ones trying to change the rules, not just on Michigan and Florida, but also on how the Democratic Party judges the winner of the primaries and caucuses.

Their popular vote argument has jingoistic appeal, but it quickly falls apart once you think about it. Under Democratic Party rules, each state has a unique method of electing its pledged delegates; you can't simply add up the results of each contest and say the resulting number is a true reflection of the popular will. It's actually worse than meaningless, because when you do add them together, what you end up with is a situation where 27 states end up getting their power significantly diluted. For more on that, see this post.